And the problem with that, naturally, is that woman are being punished. At least, so says Gail Heriot, a professor of law at the University of San Diego and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights:
Twenty years after women became the majority on campus, college administrators are struggling to strike a gender balance even as female applicants outnumber men by nearly 30 percent.
Nationally, as at Delaware, about 58 percent of college undergraduates are women, with some campuses at 70 percent.
That’s well beyond the point where the character of a college shifts, and may make a school less appealing to some of the highly qualified students it seeks to attract.
“Colleges will then be unable to attract the female students they want most – or so they fear”
[…]
Alerted by media reports that some admissions officers may be accepting less-qualified male students over female applicants, the Civil Rights Commission is investigating whether women are being discriminated against in college admissions.
“Everybody should feel very uncomfortable by the notion that it is more difficult for a woman to get into a college than a man,” Heriot said in an interview.
Of course. But just try feeling very uncomfortable about the same dynamic when it is race rather than gender that is the deciding factor in admissions decisions.
Apparently, some discrimination is more equal than others. Does this inequality in admissions occur in online schools too?”
Get over it, racists/sexists.
(thanks to LMC)
isn’t this same as what Larry Summers got in trouble for>
hoochie please to tell us what disciplines those are
Caning? Some light bondage? That thing with the hot candle wax?
I’m going to demand my dues back from teh Partiarchy if this is true.
The big throbbing reason right before their eyes is forty years of extraordinary effort to stuff women into colleges and universities – maybe they could just dial it back a bit now that they’ve been super-successful and the world has its fill of unemployable sociology majors?
If you could harness the cognitive dissonance produced by positions like the one referenced above, and convert it to energy, we could power the continental US for weeks at a time.
See, Hoff Sommers, C.
The big throbbing reason right before their eyes is forty years of extraordinary effort to stuff women into colleges and universities
When I went to college the ratio of butt ugly dudes to hot chicks was 14:1. There wasn’t much evidence of big throbbing reason back then. Seems like a good reason to go back to school now.
Gail Heriot deserves better than what she is about to receive here. (I’m looking at you, happyfeet.)
E.g., http://rightcoast.typepad.com/rightcoast/2007/12/white-guys-have.html
Or look up Heriot and the Akaka bill, Hawaii.
She, too, is an individual, not a cardboard stand-in for a bunch of ideas we find odious.
What? Failing to discriminate in favor of women is, well, discriminating against women.
Sexist pig.
Meh – a college degree isn’t even a surefire mark of quality assurance that the graduate is not a dummy nowadays. It’s more of a totem of one’s class – or of the class a member of which one wishes to be perceived – than anything else. I suppose the joke is on women with degrees when they attempt to screen potential suitors by class and find that there aren’t enough men with college degrees to go around.
So one can say that women make up the overwhelming majority of students at colleges and universities at a time when a college degree is less well regarded and much more expensive than ever before. Whooopdeeefrickendooo. I wonder if one has any causal relationship to the other? – or is that an question not to be asked in polite company?
Sure, Alec —
But the point is, why is their concern over how targeted admissions affect women, and not a concern over how targeted admissions affect whites and Asians?
Not only is the concern not there in the latter case, but even asking the question is deemed untoward and, in some circles, a kind of hate crime.
The great balancing act is becoming increasingly unbalanced. I wonder when the ship is going to capsize?
Oh, yes – I certainly understood your point and just figured that the basic assumptions underlying all of this stuff is that whites are the grand villians of history – you know, the standard frame that gets put around everything anymore. I suppose Asians are like proxy whites – with all of their buckling down and studying and music lessons and so forth – maybe they’re perceived as sneakier whites? Like they’ve planned some kind of sneak attack on our diversity and inclusiveness plans with their academic successes?
I’m telling you, Heriot is being egregiously mischaracterized.
From wikipedia:
“Proposition 209 (also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative) is a California ballot proposition which, upon approval in November 1996, amended the state constitution to prohibit public institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity. It had been supported and funded by the California Civil Rights Initiative Campaign, led by University of California Regent Ward Connerly. Co-Chair of the Campaign was law professor Gail Heriot, who is currently a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. The initiative was opposed by affirmative action advocates and supporters.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_209_(1996)
I’m confuzzled I don’t see how I’m mischaracterizing anything by playing like I’m coming at Gail from the left… I think her thinkings in that thought I quoted align nicely with the ones Mr. Summers expressed… which, I thought we agreed with the thoughts what Summers got in trouble for
Well obviously the thing to do is to keep pushing for more women in math and sciences, obviously their lack of dominance there is caused by discrimination.
Sorry, happy, that wasn’t fair of me. I know you’re goofing, even if the hoochie stuff does grate at times. But Heriot is on the right side of the issues and somebody should point that out.
From her website, a selected bibliography:
February 28, 2010 (with Peter Kirsanow).
Hate Bill Threatens Innocent, The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 22, 2009.
The ABA’s “Diversity” Diktat, The Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2008.
Affirmative Action Backfires, The Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2007.
Racial Preferences Are Wrong, The San Diego Union-Tribune, December 27, 2002
And:
California Dreaming: Race, Gender, Proposition 209 and the Non-Discrimination Principle in Action (editor)(forthcoming).
The Reverse Discrimination Dilemma Continues, The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 19, 2002
Problems with Hate Crimes Laws, The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 5, 2000.
Equal Opportunity Works: The End of Racial Preferences in California Has Been An Unheralded Success, The Weekly Standard, April 17, 2000.
Inner City Residents Want to Take Race Out of Crime Fighting, The San Diego Union-Tribune, November 26, 1997.
Doctored Affirmative Action Data, The Wall Street Journal, October 15, 1997.
The Truth About Preferences, The Weekly Standard, July 14, 1997.
stoopid fingers!
Loren —
Don’t give me her CV. Defend her thinking on this particular issue — or else explain how she was taken out of context.
Because all I’ve done here is quote from an article that quoted her, and noted that the argument she is using here is generally not accepted when the identity groups are changed up.
The obvious answer: get some hotter (and less screechy, thanks) college womens.
More Hotties, Less Harpies!
How’s that, mojo?
It is not possible to discriminate against white men. Period. That is all.
What is great here is that the Civil Rights Commission is investigating on the theory that a minority is getting into college because of relaxed standards and this violates the Civil Rights of the majority.
Shields is Yarnell (RIP)
Wait, wait: with hotties don’t we get harpies? That they simply haven’t metamorphosed for display yet shouldn’t count against.
Now that I think of it, Asians are kind of like yella Joooooos.
True, JD.
The hateful term “discrimination against white men” is to be replaced by the loving phrase, “social justice”. Passim.
First:
“Colleges will then be unable to attract the female students they want most – or so they fear,” wrote Gail Heriot, a professor of law at the University of San Diego and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
No further sourcing is provided. Here is the full text for context, a draft proposal for inquiry by the Commission from August 6, 2009, as reprinted in the Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Full-Text-The-Proposal-That/49012/
The second quote is “Everybody should feel very uncomfortable by the notion that it is more difficult for a woman to get into a college than a man,” Heriot said in an interview.
It may well be that the argument is not generally accepted with different identity groups. Hell, I know it’s not. But, it is identical to the argument she used when Berkeley was trying to cut down on the numbers of overachieving Asians in its midst.
I’ll try to cut and paste from the proposal to give context, but in a nutshell, Heriot is saying that it’s not cool for university administrators to cut down on the number of women by docking them points or giving out Y-chromosome bonuses. Most of the claptrap is coming from the writer of the article, not Heriot.
Fine.
But note that I didn’t single Heriot out as necessarily one of those who wouldn’t act consistently. In my post I wrote, in reference to Heriot’s charge that we should feel uncomfortable about certain targeting policies, “Of course. But just try feeling very uncomfortable about the same dynamic when it is race rather than gender that is the deciding factor in admissions decisions.
“Apparently, some discrimination is more equal than others.”
If this doesn’t apply to Heriot, why take it as if it does? Because surely it applies to those to whom it applies — and we all know that those types are legion, and that they are well-entrenched institutionally.
You and I know it doesn’t apply to Heriot. Now everybody else does, too. Unless they rely solely on the Philly Inquirer
That was meant to slam the MSM, not you.
Well, I didn’t know whether or not it applied to Heriot. Which is why I didn’t attribute that position to her.
Now I do know, however. So I thank you for fleshing out the players.
It means buckets that she opposes the Akaka bill I think
Here’s a novel thought. Why don’t we actually act like the color-blind, non-gender obsessed, society that the liberal Democrats have claimed they wanted us to be for the last 50 years, and consider each applicant based on merit alone…
All of the bean counting is what got us to this position in the first place.
Akaka is a fun word to say. Very fun.
#33 – Bob, they haven’t been claiming a desire for “color blindness” for some time now.
#33: Where’s the opportunity for graft and corruption in that?
I should probably pre-emptively denounce myself right now as a traitor to my sex, but observation is that there is a kind of tipping point where males just lose interest in something once it becomes female dominated.
Add to that so many colleges in order to be PC found admitting women to help their “minority” creds… so the rise of courses geared to interest females with the concurrent de-emphasis on things that attract males, like sports all in an atmosphere that was “empowering” to females and suspicious of males.
Women are excelling in colleges but you won’t catch one Left-feminist applauding it.
About five years ago, Weight Watchers realized they were entirely too focused on women. Men were not coming back to meetings, and potential new members were being turned off by the, um, “hen party” nature of the meetings. So they’ve been trying to change that. Their website has sections focused on men; if you’re a member and a man, the entire site is branded “Weight Watchers eTools FOR MEN” — capitalization in the original.
I dunno if their meetings have changed — unlikely, because the membership is still likely 90%+ women.
I should probably pre-emptively denounce myself right now as a traitor to my sex, but observation is that there is a kind of tipping point where males just lose interest in something once it becomes female dominated.
Like beach volleyball?
I keed! I keed!
The weird thing is that plenty of girls and women actually like boys and men, and vice versa. There’s really no natural solidarity between all members of each sex with one another.
The weird thing is that plenty of girls and women actually like boys and men, and vice versa.
Alec, I don’t disagree. I was a tomboy growing up on a street where all the kids my age were boys. Most of my best friends growing up have been male.
And no, there is no natural solidarity with all members of the same sex, but I’ve observed that males are a bit more sensative when they find themselves in many situations where there is overwhelming female participation.
From time to time the female attorneys and clerks took over the lunch room for baby showers .. even showers for the pregger wives of male attorneys. Any guy that accidentally wandered into the room had such a sticken look on their face it was hard to stifle laughter. Even the attorney being celebrated would look like he was tolerating it for his wife.
Also, look at nursing. It was once a male-only profession, it is now almost entirely female (though there are some brave souls going into it.) In my daughter’s RN grad class, out of about 30 nurses, nine were men.
Look at teachers for grades K-6.
My daughter is set to jaunt off for her freshman year in 2011. She is applying to engineering schools, because she has for her entire 17 years wanted to be a ballerina princess gymnast pilot astronaut veterinarian robotics engineer, who does other things on the side, too.
And you know what? She is gonna be exactly that. At schools and in programs where the boy/girl ratio is still much higher than unity.
Jeff, I think what’s going on here is that Heriot simply understands how the game is played when you’re facing-off against the campus diversity crew.
If you were to say: “The system is bad for men” that suits the diversity types just fine and the public doesn’t find that particularly compelling. But to argue that: “the system has unintended consequences which are bad for women”, that actually raises eyebrows.
Although you are correct that it’s illogical when the overriding concern ought to be using MERIT to accept applicants, that’s only because it happens to turn the diversity-o-phile’s own twisted logic on its head.
I wonder how the ascendency of Title IX plays into this phenomenon?
tforman
Under my link at 27, you’ll find the original proposal. Quite a bit about Title IX.