te_230349493

Legacy admissions discriminate by class (if you are well off to be part of a donor family, you get a leg up) or by birth right (if you were a lucky enough sperm to be part of the family of a prior attendee, you get a leg up).

How is the principles of giving preference to a particular class or birth right any different than giving preference to race? All three fly in the face of meritocracy. Yet to not allow this means that one has to invoke government interference of private criteria.

So it seems logical that there are two reasonably argued sides. It seems that if you want to follow a more libertarian model and allow a private learning institution "the right to form elite social clubs" as you put it (surely there is more function to a university than networking!), you would likewise allow it to set other policies as they may, such as allowing preferences for race. Conversely, if meritocracy is the goal, enough to force a private university to change their criteria for admissions, then all three admission practices would be problematic.

The cherry-picked groupings don't make sense to me. Class and birth right favoritism is okay but race based favoritism is not? Why? On the surface, this smacks of protection of elitism and a class based society, which pretty much nulls all commentary from various peanut galleries arguing that ending affirmative action is about meritocracy.