Ditching legacy admissions is first step in ending disparities – The Boston Globe

As I gathered signatures to end legacy preferences at Harvard College outside of the schools science center, I got called just as many names as there were signatures scrawled on my petition. Some names I embrace: advocate, stubborn campaigner, naive but daring optimist. Others I could have done without, like dense idiot, loser with a clipboard, and, most notably, swindler.

While there was no deception involved, swindler struck on something I knew to be true: At its core, our movement could be seen as a swindle. Mobilizing students and alumni of institutions like Harvard to end legacy preferences, the practice of giving special consideration to children of alumni in admissions, means getting people to advocate against their self-interest. Signing our petition means you are willing to forfeit a significant leg-up in an increasingly competitive admissions climate. It can take convincing, sure, but instead of deception, we use other tools: appealing to peoples common sense, morality, and innate inclination against injustice.

Our crew of undergraduate and graduate students went into our canvassing prepared to answer any question that could come our way, particularly from legacy students: Are we saying that legacies are undeserving of their admissions? Does legacy even matter? How will this impact fund-raising for financial aid? For all of these questions, we had our responses and statistics to back up our position.

Unexpectedly, however, our planned answers fell apart while talking to some students of color and first-generation college students like myself. They asked the most gut-punching questions:

Why do you have to take this from us now?

Why do you want to shut the door just as we got in?

And from another Vietnamese student: Dont you want your family to go to Harvard? We need more Vietnamese students here.

These questions sparked countless conversations and arguments within our activist community, and even within my own family. As a low-income student myself, I could see the internal conflict that many of these students faced. Getting to college was an uphill battle one that, when I was in high school, felt like an unobtainable fantasy. When I finally got into college, I felt like I had the chance to change the trajectory of my entire family.

Most of the low-income students and students of color we talked to had spent decades fighting to get through classist and racist systems to get to where they were. To end legacy preferences now when more first-generation college students and students of color are entering than ever before does very much seem like a rug being pulled out from underneath us. It makes sense how one could see this as unwisely forfeiting a channel to increase the number of Black, Indigenous, and people of color as students in these institutions.

These feelings are legitimate, and at the same time, they should not confuse us into seeing legacy preferences as a salvageable tool for true diversity and inclusion. The answer to higher educations exclusivity and homogeneity is not to create an elite lineage of people of color, but rather to increase access to those most marginalized within our communities. To do this, we cannot rely on the tools of white supremacy to save us.

Legacy preferences cannot be repurposed for equity, because they were created to exacerbate inequity. No one is arguing that eliminating this practice will end all disparities in higher education, but it is among the first and easiest steps in that direction. For a more fair admissions process, these preferences can only be dismantled, in conjunction with strengthening existing policies like affirmative action and poverty-preference admissions.

For decades, even among allies, legacy preferences seemed like they were too entrenched in our education system to be removed. But these past few years have shown us the power of prolonged pressure. With top institutions like Amherst College and Johns Hopkins University eliminating the practice, Harvards student body voting 59-41 percent in favor of ending legacy admissions, and now Representative Jamaal Bowman and Senator Ed Markeys new bill to ban universities that receive federal funding from using legacy or donor preferences, the momentum is growing.

With these shifting tides, those within the Ivory Tower need to now do our part. We cannot continue to be quiet and passively complicit. We need to leverage our status as alumni and donors to let the powers that be, the trustees and gatekeepers to these institutions, know that we enthusiastically and proactively reject this privilege. In doing so, we reframe the narrative.

Ending legacy preferences is not pulling a rug out from underneath ourselves. It is an intentional, collective step off the rug to make room for others, giving them the same opportunities we had to change the trajectories of their families.

Viet Nguyen is the executive director of EdMobilizer and trustee emeritus of Brown University.

Excerpt from:

Ditching legacy admissions is first step in ending disparities - The Boston Globe