June 2009

In April, Bucknell University deans shut down a racial preferences bake sale that a conservative student group hosted to illustrate the unfair and demeaning nature of lowered admissions standards based on race. The school cited a discrepancy between prices at the time of application and at the time of sale. A technicality.

After almost three months, the issue’s still hot. The story recently was covered by the Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. From the Inquirer:

The “affirmative-action bake sale”…was shut down by the administration in April. But it didn’t end there…Bucknell president Brian C. Mitchell has received about 100 letters, e-mails, and phone calls protesting the administration’s response.

The controversy at Bucknell – a 3,500-student liberal arts university in Lewisburg, Pa., about 75 minutes north of the state capital – is not unique.

College campuses across the country frequently must deal with delicate issues of free speech, political posturing, and race relations.

Affirmative-action bake sales, usually held by conservative groups, have been cropping up on campuses for years, much to the chagrin of many administrators – although Kutztown University a few years ago let one go on and used it as a “teachable moment.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) became involved after the school shut down the bake sale. The organization successfully defended the free speech rights of student groups who held similar demonstrations at the College of William and Mary, Northeastern Illinois University, DePaul University, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. FIRE is on fire. Keep up the good work.

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The Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) published a 20-page study (PDF) titled, “Racial, Ethnic and Gender Preferences in Admissions to the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Naval Academy.” Among other things, the authors found that both service academies lower standards for black admittees, and the academic qualifications gap between blacks and whites is “substantial.”

The gap between Army admittees is smaller than the Navy’s gap, and the one between whites and Hispanics is smaller. The study concludes that Hispanics don’t benefit from preferences in the Army’s admissions, and there’s no evidence that Asians receive preferences at either academy.

“In fact, there is evidence that the Asian applicants with the same academic qualifications find it somewhat more difficult to obtain admission than do their white counterparts at both academies.”

According to the report, the tougher the school’s standards, the more it uses race preferences. No surprises there.

In a section titled, “Computing the Odds of Admission,” the study shows that the odds of black-to-white admissions is 4.44 to 1, Hispanic-to-white odds 3.32 to 1, and Asian-to-white odds .67 to 1.2.

“[W]e find preferences in favor of blacks at both academies, preferences in favor of Hispanics at Navy but not at Army, and preferences against Asians at both academies. We find that the odds ratios for blacks and Hispanics relative to whites are significantly greater at the U.S. Naval Academy than at the U.S. Military Academy.”

The implications of admitting students with much lower qualifications are far-reaching. As the study notes, these students will have a more difficult time academically and graduate at lower rates.

Whites and Asians with superior credentials are rejected in favor of less qualified blacks.

“At the Naval Academy, 131 Asian rejectees (41 percent) and 2,640 white rejectees (42 percent) have both math and verbal SATs equal to or higher than the black admittee math and verbal SAT medians. There are 69 Asians (50 percent) and 1,232 whites (25 percent) rejected by the U.S. Naval Academy who attained a class rank equal or better to the rank of the black admittee median.”

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