It’s called Positive Action for the Rich: Harvard’s special admissions treatment for students whose parents are graduates or whose relatives donated money. And in a complaint filed on Monday, a rights activist group called on the federal government to put a stop to it, arguing that fairness was even more important after the Supreme Court last week severely restricted the admission of racially motivated people.
Three Boston-area groups called for the Department of Education to review the practice, saying the college’s admissions policies discriminated against Black, Hispanic and Asian applicants and favored less-qualified white candidates with alumni and donor ties.
“Why do we reward children for privileges and benefits that previous generations have earned?” asked Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, which is handling the case. “Your family’s last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of your performance and should not affect the college admissions process.”
The complaint from liberal groups comes days after a conservative group, Students for Fair Admissions, won its Supreme Court case. And it increases pressure on Harvard and other select colleges to scrap special preferences for the children of alumni and donors.
The Department of Education’s Civil Rights Office, which would look into the complaint, may already be preparing to investigate. In a statement following the Supreme Court decision, President Biden said he would ask the department to investigate “practices such as legacy registrations and other systems that expand privilege rather than opportunity.”
A Harvard spokeswoman, Nicole Rura, said the school would not comment on the complaint, but repeated a statement made last week: “As I said, in the coming weeks and months the university will decide how to preserve our core values.” .” in line with the Court’s new precedent.”
Colleges argue that the practice helps build community and encourages donations that can be used for financial aid.
A poll released last year by the Pew Research Center found that an increasing proportion of the public — 75 percent — believed that age preferences shouldn’t play a role in college admissions.
And calls for a clean-up of legacy assets and donor preferences have recently grown louder across the political spectrum.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, tweeted that if the Supreme Court “had taken her ridiculous ‘color blindness’ claims seriously, it would have abolished legacy registrations, also called affirmative action for the privileged.”
Speaking on Fox News’ The Faulkner Focus, Senator Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican and presidential candidate, said, “One of the things Harvard could do to make this even better is eliminate all the old programs where they are.” Preferential treatment for older children.”
Peter Arcidiacono, a Duke University economist who analyzed Harvard data, found that a typical white applicant’s chances of being admitted are five times higher than a typical white applicant with no pedigree.
Still, doing away with old preferences at Harvard, the study found, would not make up for the loss in diversity if race-sensitive admissions were also done away with.
In their decision on racially aware admissions, some Supreme Court justices criticized old recordings. Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, in an opinion consistent with the majority of the court, aimed at preferences for the children of donors and alumni, saying, “They are of no help to applicants who cannot boast of the fortune of their parents or travel to see the alumni.” .” tent all her life. While at first glance they appear racially neutral, these preferences undoubtedly benefit white and affluent applicants the most.”
In her dissenting opinion, Judge Sonia Sotomayor referred to old admissions and argued that retaining racial preferences was only fair given that most pieces in the admissions puzzle “disadvantaged underrepresented racial minorities.”
While Colorado passed legislation in 2021 banning old admissions to public universities, the legislation has had little traction in Congress and several other states.
A bill tabled in New York last year was rejected by the state’s private schools association, the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, which includes highly selective colleges like Columbia, Cornell and Colgate.
In Connecticut, where lawmakers held a hearing on the issue last year, Yale was among private schools that opposed it. In a written statement, Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale University, described the proposed ban as an interference by the government in the affairs of the university.
Above all, selected private universities have only slowly removed their legacies. MIT, Johns Hopkins University, and Amherst College are among the few elite schools that don’t use them.
In a press release last month describing the fall class, the first since the college scrapped the old preferences, Amherst announced that the number of first-generation students in the school’s fall class will be 19 percent higher than ever before, while the number of students doing so will be higher than ever, with legacies down to 6 percent. Previously, discounts had accounted for 11 percent of the class.
The complaint to the Department of Education was filed by three groups – Chica Project, African Community Economic Development of New England and Greater Boston Latino Network.