Why legacy students aren’t a civil rights issue

I just caught the news that four pages in a notebook dated 2014 and stuffed into a couch cushion have been accepted as a valid will for the late singer Aretha Franklin. The jury that decided this enriched two of her sons and disappointed a third son, who was favored in an earlier will. This is what I call a legacy.

But America is all worked up about another kind of legacy. I refer, of course, to the endearing habit of colleges and universities to give a leg up to the kinder of their alumni. Why do they do this? And why are so many people worked up over it? 

These aren’t hard questions. Colleges have two reasons for their legacy programs. At “elite” colleges — which is what we call colleges that have more millions in their endowments than McDonald’s has French fries — legacy admissions are a way to stay on good terms with the parents. Many of those parents are rich, many are influential — and quite a few are both. 

At non-elite colleges — the ones currently searching cushions for misplaced last wills and testaments — legacy admissions are a way to fill seats that might otherwise go rump-less. Much of higher education is a scramble to attract sufficient students to pay the bills. In this world, college “selectivity” means the institution smiles like the un-partnered girl at the dance whose face says, “Please select me!” 

Most of legacy admissions in higher education is of the second type. The colleges want their alumni to feel that they are getting special treatment, but that’s seldom true. The child would have to be dragging a criminal record or a GPA resembling the temperature of liquid nitrogen to be denied that coveted seat. 

Which brings me to the second question. Why are people so worked up? Why did a group called Lawyers for Civil Rights file a complaint against Harvard with the Office for Civil Rights against the Big H’s affection for the progeny of its alumni? The ostensible answer is that those lawyers are just appalled that anyone is getting an unfair boost up the ivy trellis. They claim that Harvard’s legacy admissions discriminate against “applicants of color.” And the Wall Street Journal plausibly describes this as “the next big civil rights battle over college admissions.” 

Pardon. I’m stifling a yawn. Don’t misunderstand. I have no special fondness for legacy admissions. I’ve had enough experience in my eighteen years as a university and college administrator to view legacy students as a burden, not a gift. They often bring the whipped cream to the entitlement sundae. Their parents are the ones who call when Logan or Madison gets a B. 

But a “civil rights battle?” The allegations that someone’s civil rights have been trampled is, of course, an aftershock of the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which is widely seen as having pulled the plug on racial preferences in college admissions. The “fair” in “Fair Admissions” referred to racially fair. It is, saith the court, unfair to admit some students on the basis of race and unfair as well to exclude others on the basis of race. 

But to the not insubstantial crowd in higher education for whom “race” is almost everything, if one form of privileging is struck down, all forms of privileging should be struck down. The upwelling of complaint about legacy admissions is entirely a raspatory exercise. The complainers want to be heard, though they don’t really have much to say. The Supreme Court struck down racial preferences because the United States passed the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which says we don’t discriminate on the basis of race. We kind of fought a Civil War to settle that matter, and we spent another hundred years trying to figure out how to make racial fairness stick.

Somehow we never got around to passing the amendment that says rich institutions can’t favor rich alumni. Nor did we fight a civil war over it, to the great disappointment of the Wobblies, the Weathermen and other Marxist revolutionaries. Wealth has its privileges still, and though they may be mildly annoying, it isn’t a matter of civil rights. 

Rather it is an attempt by the racialized left to change the subject. And it is working. Sort of. On the very day “Lawyers for Civil Rights” filed its complaint, one of the more leftward members of my organization, the National Association of Scholars, wrote to me: “Now that you can celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision on racial preference, will you spend equal effort on challenging, with respect to merit, the qualifications of legacy and athletic prowess? Wouldn’t consistency demand that you do that?” 

Not really, although his including “athletic prowess” threw me off stride. Is anybody really arguing against preferences for people who play basketball well? Wouldn’t that just further reduce opportunities for prospective black students? Then I realized he must be thinking of those pampered few who get a preference because they are skilled equestrians, yachtsmen, or ski jump daredevils — forms of prowess more common in the pale skin community. 

In truth, I’d prefer college admissions to be based on “merit,” but merit broadly construed. Evidence of a high level of academic talent combined with focus, ambition and perseverance should be the default criteria for admission to seriously competitive academic programs, but other talents should count as well, though I think it is futile to try to catalog them all and assign them precise weights. Ideally the admissions office should be run by people with catholic tastes, the eyes of connoisseurs, the sensibility of baseball scouts and a generous helping of common decency.

The “diversity” doctrine ruined all that. The admissions departments have become like the inner sanctums of hedge funds, with ever more refined formula for getting what they want, which in this case is more minority students without getting caught in violation of the law. The noise about “legacy” admissions is just one more handful of dust thrown in the eyes of the public. 

But while we are at it, congratulations to those legacy heirs, Kecalf Franklin and Edward Franklin. You can say a little prayer.