Admitting individuals to college based only on factors like grades, scores, and extracurricular activities seems a naïve notion, I admit. We must “remedy” past discrimination, they say. But when our government makes assumptions about individuals, and we authorize the government to make judgments based on those assumptions, we’re in dangerous territory.
At Minding the Campus, Charlotte Allen writes about preferences for men in college admissions to “remedy” the imbalance between men and women on campuses. Some schools are lowering standards to admit more men, and Allen says Title IX of the Civil Rights Act allows it.
“Title IX contains an exemption that specifically allows private colleges that aren’t professional or technical institutions to prefer one sex over the other in undergraduate admissions. Militant feminists and principled opponents of affirmative action might complain about the discrimination against women that Title IX permits, but for many second- and third-tier liberal arts colleges lacking male educational magnets such as engineering and business programs, the exemption may be a lifesaver, preventing those smaller and less prestigious schools from turning into de facto women’s colleges that few young people of either sex might want to attend.” [emphasis added]
Sex-based preferences are illegal in public colleges and universities, however. I oppose sex preferences, particularly if they involve lowered standards. Preferring a male applicant over a female applicant means the female applicant has been denied admission because she’s a woman.
Allen notes that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is investigating several schools, public and private, to determine whether they’re discriminating against women to admit more men. Allen makes a couple of discussion-worthy points about whether preferences based on sex should be viewed differently from preferences based on race.
“It ought to be possible to argue that gender is different from race or ethnicity as a human category, the latter being a product of genetic drift, cultural isolation and religious differences, and the former an essential element in every human being’s identity. Sexual dimorphism, with the very real physical and psychological differences between the sexes that it entails, isn’t a cultural construct but the very machine of human reproduction and the passing on of human civilization: mating, the making of families, and the raising of children, which is arguably the most important of all human activities. The desire of many high school seniors to spend four years of their young adulthood in a setting like that in real life where neither sex outnumbers the other—and their willingness to vote with their feet if the setting proves otherwise—is different in kind from the discomfort that some might feel where there are ‘too many’ Jews or blacks or Asians. Many college administrators are well aware of this and have quietly adjusted their admissions policies accordingly. And it’s hard to see what’s wrong with that, especially when they’re dealing with borderline applicants who can’t be said to qualify for the freshman class strictly on their merits.”
Of course, some would argue that race and ethnicity are also essential elements in every human being’s identity, and that various racial/ethnic groups have “very real physical and psychological differences.”
Regardless of the commission’s findings, one thing is certain: sex-based preferences don’t quite rile people up the way race-based preferences do, do they?
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