13 February 2019

Yale Elite Series


The Power of Privilege: Yale and America’s Elite Colleges by Joseph Soares, Stanford University Press, 2007, Excerpts

Americans believe in the essential goodness of the idea that people should be able to achieve in school and work to the full extent of their natural abilities and drive. Being rewarded for what one does, rather than whom one is, and being able to rise or fall on one’s merits is part of what defines the American dream on individual freedom and personal accomplishment. Our national ethos of self-determination may be a delusion, but its appeal persists, even internationally.

We take great national pride in our premier universities and like to believe that their academic excellences are matched by a fair admissions process that selects the best brains for their classrooms. Our belief in America as a society where opportunities are open to talent is sustained, in part, by our confidence that our most prestigious universities operate according to the best possible standards of academic meritocracy. One should get into a top university because of one’s achievements, not because of accidents of birth.

What would it mean, however, if Harvard and Yale and their peers had a history of excluding applicants based on gender, religion, race, income, and personality? If those Ivy universities pursued, not only in the recent past, but at present, admissions policies aimed at capturing youths from families at the top of the income pyramid, and those universities selected students more for personal qualities than for academic accomplishments? What sort of academic meritocracy would we have if one’s chances of being in it were substantially determined by family wealth? Unless one believes that only rich people can be smart, we have a staggering distance to travel to achieve a fair opportunity for all to reach every level of our educational system. Education is supposed to be an equal opportunity leveler, but at the top, it has become a mechanism of class stratification.







3 Women Sue Yale And 9 Fraternities, Saying They Enable Abuse And Harassment
13 Feb 2019

Three female students are suing Yale and nine of its fraternities for allegedly enabling the Greek organizations to host events where sexual harassment, abuse and discrimination run rampant. All three of the women, who are undergraduate students at the Ivy League school, say they have been groped without consent at Yale fraternity parties and have seen other women assaulted and harassed by fraternity members at events. The lawsuit claims that fraternities have “unrivaled influence over Yale’s social scene.” Also included in the lawsuit are several references to past instances of harassment, including an incident in 2011 in which DKE pledge members appeared in video chanting, “No means yes! Yes means anal!” The suit points out that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faced an accusation of sexually assaulting a girl when he was in high school, is an alumnus of Yale’s DKE chapter.

Harvard Law Review Suit Opens New Front in Admissions-Bias Fight
08 Oct 2018
Harvard and New York University were sued by a group that claims their law schools illegally use race and gender as criteria for selecting law students to staff their most elite academic journals. The suits come amid growing scrutiny on affirmative action in college admissions and may put the policies at elite graduate schools under a microscope. Next week, a federal judge in Boston is scheduled to hear testimony in a trial accusing Harvard of discriminating against Asian-Americans in undergraduate admissions. The U.S. Justice Department is also probing bias in admissions at Harvard and Yale universities.

Power elite of suburban Washington split over Kavanaugh allegations
17 Sep 2018
Christine Blasey Ford threw a Supreme Court confirmation into turmoil with her decision to step forward with sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh — but she also broke the delicate social code of the affluent Maryland suburbs where they both grew up. Their families have traveled for decades in the same prep school and country-club circles, populated by Washington power players — including plenty of lawyers, lobbyists and government officials whose shared goal is to avoid public embarrassment. Ford attended the elite Holton-Arms School at the time she alleges that Kavanaugh, who attended the equally elite Georgetown Preparatory School, attacked her. Ford’s father, Ralph Blasey, was president of the all-male Burning Tree Golf Club in Bethesda, where Kavanaugh’s father has also been an active member.

Yale Film 1966: To Be a Man
One of the most popular films shown by Yale alumni clubs across the nation.
Some of the figures who feature in the film included the classics professor Erich Segal, five years before his Love Story would become the top selling work of fiction and the biggest box office hit of 1970, as well as a young John Kerry, member of the class of 1966. One student stated that ”it needed a few shots of a mixer with gross-outs and beer cans to be complete.”