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Fairness is as fairness does
Women currently make up more than 56% of the nation's undergraduates, and the percentage is going up all the time. On some campuses, more than 60% of undergrads are women. But even as men slowly disappear from the ranks of college students, we should not assume that they are not still oppressors, and that the women who are outnumbering them are not still oppressed by the patriarchy. Writing for the New York Times, an admissions officer for Kenyon College explains:
...because young men are rarer, they're more valued applicants. Today, two-thirds of colleges and universities report that they get more female than male applicants, and more than 56 percent of undergraduates nationwide are women. Demographers predict that by 2009, only 42 percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men.We have told today's young women that the world is their oyster; the problem is, so many of them believed us that the standards for admission to today's most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men. How's that for an unintended consequence of the women's liberation movement?
The elephant that looms large in the middle of the room is the importance of gender balance. Should it trump the qualifications of talented young female applicants? At those colleges that have reached what the experts call a "tipping point," where 60 percent or more of their enrolled students are female, you'll hear a hint of desperation in the voices of admissions officers.
Beyond the availability of dance partners for the winter formal, gender balance matters in ways both large and small on a residential college campus. Once you become decidedly female in enrollment, fewer males and, as it turns out, fewer females find your campus attractive.
What are the consequences of young men discovering that even if they do less, they have more options? And what messages are we sending young women that they must, nearly 25 years after the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, be even more accomplished than men to gain admission to the nation's top colleges? These are questions that admissions officers like me grapple with.
Ending her article with an apology for "demographic realities" to all the fine young women her college has rejected along with their disappointed parents, Jennifer Britz articulates with remarkable candor a style of disingenuous doublethink that speaks powerfully to the ideological agendas at work on campuses--and in their admissions offices--today. Nowhere in her op-ed does she show the concern for young men that she would show for young women if their undergraduate numbers mirrored those of men; everywhere in her op-ed does she evince a determination to describe women as victims in need of special consideration, even when the women she is trying to help are, collectively, clearly succeeding in great numbers and clearly outperforming their male counterparts.
The irony is that Britz brings the logic of affirmative action full circle; in lamenting the lost opportunities of young women who are rejected by colleges in favor of less qualified male applicants, she makes, however unwittingly, an eloquent argument for meritocracy across the board. In this sense, the most compelling thing about Britz' piece--entitled, tellingly, "To All the Girls I've Rejected"--is the manner in which it accidentally makes a case quite other than the one she ostensibly means for it to make.
UPDATE 3/27/06: Much more commentary at Discriminations and InsideHigherEd.com.
Posted by acta online on March 23, 2006 at March 23, 2006 09:01 AM
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» “Demographic Realities” from Discriminations
Jennifer Delahunty Britz, dean of admissions and financial aid at Kenyon College, has an interesting OpEd in today’s New York Times about the increasing difficulty of talented young women (relative to talented young men) getting into selective colleg... [Read More]
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Comments
"only 42 percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will be given to men."
This shows that men are far more intelligent and privileged than women.
Posted by: Jimmay at March 23, 2006 10:59 PM
There are two big questions about why the number of men applying to schools like Kenyon has been dropping so steadily.
The first is whether and how the content and methods of K-12 education are leaving male students less interested and/or prepared to go to college.
The second is whether there is something about "elite" schools like Kenyon that make male applicants less interested in them.
With regard to the latter, note that Kenyon has a "red" rating for free speech from FIRE. (See their listing here: http://www.thefire.org/index.php/codes/1255/)
Kenyon has a speech code that asserts
"Other examples of harassment include:
*epithets or "jokes" referring to an individuals group-based attributes;
*placement of offensive written or visual material on anothers living quarters or work area;
*offensive messages sent through electronic mail
Speech or other expression constitutes harassment by personal vilification if it:
*is intended to insult or stigmatize an individual or an identifiable group of College-related individuals on the basis of their race, sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, or national or ethnic origin, and
*is addressed directly to (though not necessarily in the presence of) the individual or individuals whom it insults or stigmatizes, and,
*makes use of words or nonverbal symbols that convey hatred or contempt for human beings on the basis of their race, sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, or national or ethnic origin."
The Kenyon student handbook states:
"The policy of Kenyon College is that the language used by its members in public communicationsboth oral and writtenbe nondiscriminatory. Such language should not exclude, belittle, or offend, either by explicit reference or implicit connotation, an individual or group on the basis of any of the following: age, disability, national or ethnic origin, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation."
Male students, especially those who do not fit in any other protected minority group, may be understandably wary of going to a college like Kenyon in which even casual epithets, "jokes," or insults directed at a member of another, more favored group could get them expelled.
All students, of course, should be wary of choosing a college or university with so little interest in the free enquiry that should be central to the mission of higher education.
But male students may have learned that they are more likely to bear the consequences of such misbegotten policies.
We have frequently noted on Health Care Renewal (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/) how health care organizations, including academic institutions, are often run to suit the agendas, economic and ideological, of their top executives, rather than to fulfill their missions.
The managers of these organizations seem to have learned from the leaders of too many of our colleges and universities that they can hide their personal agendas behind the revered reputations of the institutions they are thus betraying.
Eventually, though, the truth will out, and people will start to avoid institutions that fail to uphold their missions. The declining interest of male students in colleges and universities, particularly "elite," but politicized institutions like Kenyon, may be the first sign that this is happening.
Posted by: Roy M. Poses MD at March 25, 2006 04:32 PM
Check out Kevin Carey's quick-but-shrewd analysis. It rips the article to shreds, and justifiably so.
Posted by: Sherman Dorn at March 27, 2006 03:42 PM