Sorry to have been absent for awhile, but I am happy to note that while I've been giving a speech this evening to a North Carolina group (the Fair Trial Initiative) devoted to helping poor death row inmates, most of the responses to critical comments that I would have been motivated to write have already been covered quite well by others. I add a few observations:
The following is tiresome: "Not to worry, there are thousands of poor people of all races whose stories of police and prosecutorial misconduct will never make the headlines of any national newspaper, talking head TV show or outraged blogger." I would wager the commenter a hot fudge sundae that I have written more than ten times as many published articles over the years about injustices to poor people than the commenter ever has. I would also wager that the commenter cannot site many (if any) examples of prosecutorial misconduct directed against poor people in recent years that is as egregious as the misconduct of Nifong here. More to the point, since when is it a plausible critique of an article decrying especially grotesque injustices to human beings to say that less affluent human beings, too, suffer injustices? If you are are the victim of an armed robbery, should you keep quiet because less privileged people than you have been victims of armed robbery more often? Is there a more flattering way to describe such logic than to say that it is shallow. . . well, I'll save the noun.
As for Anonymouseducator's "Lets not pretend that most of the Duke lacrosse team would have been accepted at Duke if they didn't play lacrosse": Has this commenter ever complained about admissions preferences for preferred racial minorities, which are considerably weightier than those for lacrosse players? I acknowledge the possibility that some groups (perhaps including a few of the lacrosse players) are given undue preferences because of status as athletes or as racial minorities. So which of these admissions preferences should be assessed as more problematic? The one that leads to a 100% graduation rate and GPA's on a par with the class as a whole, plus a lifelong harvest of friendships and valuable lessons in clean competition, teamwork, and endurance in the face of difficulty? Or the one that leads to dramatically sub-par academic and graduation rates plus racial isolation, self-segregation, and discord? For extra credit, Anonymopuseducator, please take a guess which of the preferences described above is the lacrosse preference and which is the racial preference.
"Privileged jocks": The only substantive content of this phrase is that by accidents of birth, such individuals are born into relatively affluent families and have through hard work developed their innate athletic gifts to the point of becoming college athletes. Just what, pray tell, is reprehensible about that? Would you like them better if they were born into poor families and had joined violent gangs or drug rings?
On our criticism of the NYT's 8/25/06 monstrosity versus the quoted passages thereof: I am mystified as to why anything in the passages quoted by the commenters casts the slightest doubt on our criticisms, and would be grateful for an explanation.
Stuart Taylor
Furthermore, Mr. Taylor's challenge to find prosecutorial misconduct that surpasses Nifong's is, frankly, laughable. A quick jaunt through my RSS reader on this very blog reveals a prosecutor lying about the dismissal of the very indictment he was prosecuting. Although I am uncertain if the defendant in People v. Flores was poor, I'm sure the morass of the American judicial system will yield up a bevy of equally compelling examples.
That's an awfully long-winded way of saying Mr. Taylor is basically correct but must be criticized anyway because he's a conservative. Why don't you just be honest and spit it out?
I agree with Taylor's general thrust, as well as your response to Cassandrus. However, as an practical matter I think Taylor ill-served by straying into the mine-filled waters of the AA debate with this post. It's the sort of politically-charged diversion that a.) threatens to divert the conversation onto an almost completely unrelated subject; b.) offers a reason for those of opposing views on AA to shut their minds to everything else Taylor (and Johnson) are saying.
I haven't read the Johnson/Taylor book yet (eagerly looking forward to it), but I think that one of K.C. Johnson's strengths as a blogger was his admirably stubborn unwillingness to let the focus of Durham-in-Wonderland deviate from the Duke LAX case into tangential political matters. Cassandrus' post illustrates why I hope the book retains that laserlike focus: there are some people who are looking for any reason to change the subject. Why give them the opportunity?
No, it is a long-winded way of saying that many conservatives are extremely selective about cases they champion. (I am not leveling this critique at Stuart Taylor, nor even asserting he falls into the class of "many conservatives"; merely clearing up an obvious misreading.)
The sad truth is that the answer is “yes.” In the inverted world that modern liberals inhabit, no one really deserves any advantage they gain through talent or hard work because it’s all a lucky accident of birth. Thus any unequal outcome is inherently undesirable. I think we can thank John Rawls and his theory of social justice for this kind of thinking.
I'm not complaining about it. I even said that I don't have a problem with it.
When I said "privileged jocks," I meant something different than your definition of "wealthy athletes." And my point - which noone really cares about, I understand - is that it doesn't seem like it's enough for someone to think that the guys were innocent and horribly wronged. You need to think that they deserved to get into Duke, that they were nice guys, etc.
I would not like them more if they poor and had joined gangs. Why would I? How does that follow from anything I said?
Anyhow, sorry for all of this. I agree with pretty much everything that has been said about the media coverage and am particularly shocked and appalled by the faculty reaction.
But it seems to me the better liberal response to a conservative (rightly) outraged by the Duke case is not to bash them for selective focus, but to generalise from this acknowledged example of a prosecutor abusing his power and ask them if they can now see that black people's long-standing complaints about this sort of thing are quite plausible and we should really put some effort into getting poor defendants adequate representation.
I don't excuse the LAX team's hiring strippers to entertain at it's alcohol drenched party. If my son attended such a party I would be more than merely disappointed and I'd do more than merely lecture. However, it's unfair to suggest that the LAX team was somehow more deviant in this regard than the majority of other Duke students.
Is anyone going to claim that the consumption of vast quantities of alcohol is uncommon among students (athletes and non-athletes alike) at any US college campus (with the possible exception of BYU)? Were the parties hosted by Duke's many fraternities, sororities, and clubs alcohol and stripper free -- with the LAX party being the only exception to this high standard of behavior? No. Unfortunately, over-drinking and hiring strippers is all too common among college students and I'm not aware of ANY evidence that this poor behavior was more common among the LAX players than among the rest of Duke's students.
As for being there to study, doesn't the fact that the LAX team had a 100% graduation rate and had an average GPA at least equal to the rest of the student population put the lie to the canard that the LAX players weren't at Duke to get an education? What, were they there in the hope they'd be drafted by the National LAX League? (Are the games of the NLL pay-per view? I can't seem to find them on cable.) No, unlike basketball, football, and perhaps baseball and hockey, playing LAX at a university cannot be viewed as furthering one's career unless the athletics is coupled with academics. These young men were at Duke to get an education. Playing LAX may have given them that opportunity, but it's clear they were taking advantage of their chance to get an education.
How about Tulia?
That obvious was a silly point by Stuart Taylor. Other than the fact that it's logically silly (poor people are less likely to have their injustices become public knowldge), all one would have to do is look at the list of the innocence project and start clicking on names. Ryan Matthews (a case I worked on) is a good starting place - having seen the proscutorial misconduct on that case, I wouldn't be surprised if more than half the death row inmates from Jefferson Parish were innocent.
Mr. Taylor, I think you would have been better advised to not have made this rebuttal. Certainly the team members were treated most unjustly, but your defense of them goes beyond that to defending their character, which, based on the writings of at least one of them, and criminal arrests for another, was not all that stellar in every instance.
I got admitted on academics, and I generally looked down on jocks, but I've seen, mid-career, that the attitudes and social skills the athletes gained (or had), especially the self-discipline, have served them well in life.
That is particularly true for non-marquee sports (which is probably everything except men's football, maybe basketball) — the school doesn't admit a lacrosse player to fill the stadium with alumni and make them happy so they will be generous, and the student-athlete isn't even trying to win the Big Leagues lottery, it is just one aspect of who the applicant is.
As I said, I'm ignorant of this, but is lacrosse played much in public high schools? How much of the team at a school like Duke is recruits versus walk-ons? And repeating (although I guess I'll just have to buy the book) how does anyone "acquire ... an intense dislike ... for lacrosse players"?
Shouldn't lacrosse in particular get diversity points for being a Native American sport?
So if A sent an obscene, racist e-mail (which arguably was a parody) and B exchanged racial eptihets with a stripper, then C, D, and E have character problems because all 5 are on the lacrosse team?
It was not the lacrosse team that was on trial, and whoever was charged was not charged with being crude or ugly. Three specific people were charged with a serious felony. If anyone's charater was relevant, it is the character of those three. Taking two other people's alleged actions and generalizing to the whole team is an ugly kind of attribution of guilt by assiciation, which I suspect youwere not really trying to engage in.
1. If Taylor was silly, he was empirically silly, and not logically silly. Correct me if I'm wrong but the phrase above that I italicized is an emprical assertion and not a logical one.
2. You should be happy, given your interest in prosecutorial misconduct, that the Nifong case has publicized the problem, and has united people on this issue accross the ideological spectrum. This does not come through in the otne of your comments.
3. I suspect that in most of the cases of prosecutorial misconduct, at least there was a crime committed. In this case, the prosecutor concocted the crime, and then filed charges. This special egregious fillip does not diminish the gravity of other cases of misconduct, of course, nor does it diminish the effect of such misconduct on the victims.
2) I have repeatedly said in these threads that the problems with the attention to the Duke case involves the lessons that were supposedly learned from it, not that the attention existed at all.
3) I fail to see how that is relevant at all. In any event, that's
a) not entirely true - railroading in "false rape claims" and planting of drugs have been (I hesitate to use this term, because I am still talking about a small minority of arrests) widespread, at least far more widespread than 1 case.
b) a function of the intricacies and problems with rape and the criminal justice system, which are unique to that class of crime.
Unlike liberals and leftists, for instance? You or others attribute this trait solely to conservatives? Let's see...just one example: Abu Ghraib on the front page of the NYTimes for how many weeks running?
re: they deserved to get in
I haven't the slightest idea on whether they deserved to be there. I think sports are definitely over-emphasized in college, and while it would be a very interesting conversation to have sometime, it's amazingly out of place here.
re: they were nice guys
I have seen very little hagiography about the lacrosse players; even the captains admit that the party was in poor taste, and apologized repeatedly for it.
Hey, the book even shows that the players were crude and drank too much. They weren't super-nice kids, but they weren't racist sadists, either. They were just normal students, with no history of sexual or racist violence.
That's only part (1), parts (2) and (3) was how the media fueled racial passions and how aloof-to-damaging Duke's own faculty and administration was in responding to the hoax. Again, reading some of these posts its apparent people are either cognitive dissonant or willfully ignorant about the facts of the hoax.
Short summary: Anyone with an IQ of 75 who isn't bigoted knew that this case had no legs in early May (or sooner if they had an IQ above 100), yet this debacle was allowed to continue for over a year because of (1), (2) and (3).
One can argue that (1) generally is more likely to happen to minorities or disadvantaged defendants, but (2) and (3) is what turned this case on its head.
Can you imagine any university leader, whether its at Yale or Jackbat Tech Western State Community College, not being more proactive if a prosecutor repeatedly made public comments invoking racial tensions in a black-on-white apparent hoax? Can you imagine the faculty being equally damaging?
Likewise, can you imagine mainsteream media outlets, such as the NYT, continuing to give credence to not only to the unfounded allegations, but the apparent procedural violations and misconduct of the investigation and prosecution for MONTHS on a black-on-white hoax?
As for the issue of prosecutorial misconduct, it is certainly true that severe prosecutorial misconduct happens frequently in lower-profile cases with poor defendants. It is also true that not nearly enough attention is paid to those cases (partly because people like Revs. Al and Jesse concern themselves more with fighting the N-word).
Here, however, many people tend to forget that even though the LAX players' wealth and status allowed them to afford good attorneys, it was also their wealth and status which drove Nifong to pursue the case, and which drove the media to blow the story up and convict the players without a trial.
Finally, tvk's comments seem particularly flawed. While a stripper-fueled off-campus weekend party may not enhance education, attendance at such a party hardly means that you don't wish to get a serious education. While I have no idea (and don't particularly care) how hard the LAX players partied on a regular basis, it's worth mentioning that some of the hardest partiers I knew in both college and law school were also the most serious students, while some of the least hard partying were also among the least serious students. Additionally, the assumption that these particular players' LAX talents were preventing non-athletes from attending Duke is deeply flawed; but even if true, participation in athletics adds another dimension to education that is maybe more important than academics - that of teamwork and personal responsibility....not to mention that participation in athletics can suggest a more well-balanced, well-adjusted individual. After all, there's a reason why participation in athletics or other physical endeavors is a fundamental element of the Rhodes Scholarship.
Slightly? A 9% difference is slightly? I don't think that word means what you think it means...
And of course, the "differences" are NOT 9% and 3%, respectively. Your comparisons are A and B to the average of A, B, and C. The relevant comparison is A and B to C -- i.e., Blacks and Hispanics as compared to non-Black, non-Hispanic students. The differences are probably "slightly" bigger when you don't double-count.
The same criticism applies to the Lacrosse players' graduation rate, but I would assume that they could come out above other athletes, and perhaps all non-lacrosse players, even if not against all non-athletes.
When Jackson-Lee, Conyers, Rangal, Payne, and Towns offered the "The Law Enforcement Evidentiary Standards Improvement Act of 2005" (infomally known as the Tulia Act), where was the support? And for that matter, where is the support now? That law still hasn't passed Congress as far as I know. And from what I read about the law it isn't perfect, but it's a start - and *that's* the conversation we should have. Where is the support for recorded interrogation and increased and QUICKER assistance to low-IQ defendants, before they confusedly waive their rights and confess to something they may (or may not) have done? Where is the support for more open access of Jencks and Brady material?
I'm particularly intrigued by the jock/nerd angle here, as it offers the possibility that at least some of today's social and political debates are motivated by perceived or remembered social slights suffered during childhood. If bookish (and therefore unpopular) children achieve greater educational success on average than their jock peers, and therefore enter the social and economic elite at a greater rate, do their political preferences (which have greater weight than their numbers deserve due to their priviliged positions) reflect childhood envies?
By this reasoning, it's inappropriate for them to have any leisure time at all.
An empirical statement is one which can potentially be confirmed or refuted by observation. A logical statement is one that follows from another proposition of set of propositions by following certain operations (such as syllogisms or Boolean analysis). The statement:
seems to fall into the former category. You can determine whether injustices become public knowledge by observation. there is no antecedent proposition from which this is derived. But this is a quibble.
with regard to my third point-- that most prosecutorial misconduct is associated with a crime-- you seem to agree with me thatthere is a subset that is not so associated (a subset >1-- the Duke kids are not unique), even though you say that my statement is "not entirely true.
A logical analysis:
1. "most" is defined as >50% (an analytic--i.e. definitional or axiomatic statement, and the major premise)
2. >50% of prosecutorial misconduct has an associated actual crime (an empiric statement, and the minor premise; maybe you don't agree with this, but if it is true, then statement #3...
3. Ergo, most prosecutorial misconduct haa an associated actual crime (the conclusion)...
must also be true.
And what's with all the sics when people respond to me? I write these things quickly and don't edit - they're stream of consciousness. You really think you are scoring points every time you catch a typo or syntax error?
A statement can be both empirical and logical. The sun will rise in the east tomorrow is both a logical statement (given that the sun rises in the east every morning), and an empirical one if we want to go out and watch the sunrise.
What are the specific provisions of this legislation? You didn't say. And are you saying that anyone who does not support it is, ipso facto, condoning prosecutorial misconduct?
Perhaps I'm dense, but I don't understand how this statement can be logical, except insofar as it is derived from another.
Logical does not mean "obviously true to any moron with a pair of eyes," let alone "conforming to my deepest prejudices."
Also, some elite schools have been comparatively easy to get into (e.g., U Chicago), others notably difficult (e.g., Harvard), with a decided reversal of positioning when it comes to getting through and graduating (e.g., Chicago very demanding, Harvard not so demanding). So, the fact that an athlete goes on to graduate ought not by itself be taken as convincing proof that the decision to admit them was beyond question correct. It seems that Duke LAX players, at least when looked at collectively, may be a praiseworthy exception given not only their 100% graduation rate, but their GPAs, especially those in difficult fields of study. (Anybody know the stats for Duke basketball? If so, I would very much like to have them.)
ST: "So which of these admissions preferences should be assessed as more problematic?" At Duke or in general? We can't answer this question about preferences for athletes and affirmative action because you have presented no data on the academic performance of Duke basketball players, only on the LAX team, nor have you presented any at all pertaining to affirmative action admissions at Duke. In any event, I don't think the debate should be framed as a question of whether admissions preferences for athletes or those for minorities are better/worse. The two are not closely, if at all, related matters, so each should be taken up separately. (And if both of those were to be taken up at the same time, then why not include preferences for legacies, offspring of prominent people [Brown!], and for the children of those expected to make large donations?)
ST: "Privileged jocks." Again, are we talking only about the specifics of this case, so just the Duke LAX players? If so, I would agree that no evidence has been adduced to support "privileged," only the assumption that many would not have been admitted but for their athletic abilities. And while wholly irrelevant to the egregious prosecutorial misconduct, the notion of "privileged jocks" undoubtedly was part of the combustible fuel for the angry Left's purposes. Fair characterization here? No, but definitely part of the overall story.
(BTW, thanks to Dan Golden's highly informative articles in the WSJ, for which he won a Pultizer, I know a good deal more than I might otherwise about Duke's robust "affirmative action" program for the scions of wealthy families.)
What are the specific provisions of this legislation? You didn't say. And are you saying that anyone who does not support it is, ipso facto, condoning prosecutorial misconduct?
2) Neurodoc's suggestion that "Any school that recruits athletes, and that includes the academically elite ones... regularly admits athletes with below par academic credentials." may well be true for athletes in revenue generating sports but in non-revenue sports the applicant might have an advantage by playing the sport, but typically their admission-worthiness isn't much different than the typical applicant who gets admitted.
Example: my sister-in-law applied to colleges last year and is in all objective terms a fantastic student who would have been an asset to any college and would do well anywhere. Near perfect SATs and graduated #1 in her fairly competitive high school. However, she didn't get into every college, in particular she didn't get into Princeton. That didn't mean she didn't belong at Princeton, its just from the thousands of applicants they can't admit every stellar application. However, if she was a lacrosse player and Princeton had a nationally recognized women's lax team I guarantee she would have been accepted. Would that fact make her less of a student or less belonging? I don't think so. I proffer that most lacrosse players fit into that category. Sure, they may have an admission preference because of athletics, but its not as if Duke (or other top schools) are remotely compromising their academic standards by admitting them.
For that first sentence, are you limiting your comment to this particular team? If not, please present your source. If so, how is your reliance upon a small, isolated example a fair comparison? I could as easily find a stellar minority student who was admitted by virtue of racial preferences, and compare his performance to the academic failures of the lowest-performing "sports scholarship" athletes in the nation.
As for the latter, you're not familiar with team dorms, team fraternities (didn't event actually happen in a team fraternity), "team tables" at the dining hall, etc. - various ways in which student athletes are segregated from the rest of the student population, given various forms of preferential treatment, etc.? But all of that is "good" isolation and self-segregation?
(and again, sorry about the links, or absence thereof, I just get the hang of setting them up here)
"Even at the nation's elite colleges and universities, athletes have become so narrowly focused on sports that they are far removed from their classmates academically, socially and culturally, according to a study of intercollegiate athletics in the Ivy League and at 25 other highly selective colleges...A generation ago, athletes at elite colleges were far closer to their fellow students in academic performance and student life outside the gym, the study said...The authors said the elite colleges had felt a false sense of well-being because they did not have the same problems as schools with big-time sports programs." NYT, 9/15/03)
Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values, Princeton University Press
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7577.html
"Haverford Debates Impact of Athletics" (NYT, 12/4/05)
(FWIW: *Bowen former president of Princeton; **Levin daughter of president of Yale, Harvard '00 and currently doctoral candidate in statistics)
It's not an official policy per se, but yes, it's pretty tough to flunk out of Duke (or Notre Dame, or Harvard, etc.). You can do it, but you actually have to try (the easiest way to do it is not actually taking tests or handing in papers, but not studying for tests and handing in s****y papers generally won't accomplish said goal).
Duke faculty seem to have little problem with the Basketball team, which has pretty good numbers. Those numbers seem to be heavility tied to amazing Socilogy program which is aparantly unique at Duke in allowing the student to graduate in three years while taking light academic loads during season. Season in this case is Spring and Fall.
Is is unclear how the students who camp out for K'ville for a week on occasion compare in dedication to academics with those who have a party during Spring Break, even if a stripper is involved in one.
actually ( i admit my analytical reasoning stuff is a bit rusty but..) im not sure that it's a logical statement. it's a prediction based on past behavior. solely because the sun has risen for the last XXXXXX days, it does not LOGICALLY follow that it will rise tomorrow. my understanding is that a logical statement would have to be deductively valid, etc. this is not. it merely predicts based on past events, that an event that has (presumably ) ALWAYS happened in the 24 hr cycle, will happen tomorrow.
You are assuming that those recruited to play "non-money" sports are not much different from their classmates with respect to academic performance in high school. At many elite schools, especially small colleges, there are no "money sports" if by that we mean sports that generate substantial revenue for their schools (ticket sales, television rights, sale of clothes), but almost all of them (not my alma mater, a technical institution on the banks of the Charles River, nor I expect that imitator out where the Rose Bowl is played) will go pretty low to get a highly sought athlete for a sport they care about (e.g., hockey at Bowdoin). "Non-money" sports like hockey can still have great tangible (alumni donations) and intangible (cool, not geeky school) benefits for a school. And I will tell you on the basis of anecdotal evidence that this can also be true of athletes playing "non-money" sports (e.g., NESCAC baseball) that the school cares relatively little about. Women's sport teams, of course, are rarely profitable for schools, by Title IX mandates them.
I don't know what the story is on Duke basketball and academics (or competitive teams at Stanford), and have long wondered. So if someone really knows, please share.
I don't know what the story is on Duke basketball and academics (or competitive teams at Stanford), and have long wondered. So if someone really knows, please share.
"You are assuming that those recruited to play "non-money" sports are not much different from their classmates with respect to academic performance in high school."
Yeah I am, look at the 3 named defendants and their educational background, they are kids of bankers and lawyers who attended prestigious private schools. In a world without lacrosse do you think these guys would have ended up in community colleges? Granted, that's a small sample size but I really doubt Reade Seligmann was any less admissions-worthy than the average Duke admittee.
Anyways, back to my experiences, I didn't go to Duke or MIT but rather to a college that did have a somewhat major football program along with several other major and minor sports (lacrosse wasn't one of them). For the last 3 years I worked as a math tutor in the athletic department. I wasn't made aware of SAT scores or admissions policies but I can tell you that all of the assignments involved one program: the football program. From my discussions with tutors in other disciplines their experiences were similar.
The soccer teams, tennis teams, golf teams, baseball team, basketball teams, field hockey team, etc. all had access to the tutorial system, yet didn't use the services. Further, some of the teams routinely received awards for having GPAs that exceeded that of the average student, and in some cases exceeded greatly. Maybe my institution didn't care as much about "niche" sports at other schools, but I can't imagine that the university bent over backwards to admit members of the non-revenue teams if their application standards were far below that of the average student....a lot of these sports had little or no scholarship support.
I have no direct knowledge of Sociology at Duke. My duaghter is a Socilogy makor at anopther school, so I have no particular hate for the subject. There is a pattern that Basketball players with academic qualifications such that whether they will pass the NCAA clearinghouse is in doubt can easily complete a Sociology major in three years. This is in the web and woof of the University, as two year and gone talent players are aparantly informed that they can leave with a degree if they stay another year.
Most Duke students, even the brightest, have to work very hard to complete their majors, with much less of the fluff that many college students pad their core courses with. Many Duke Basketball players (not all) have managed this feet while taking 12 hours per semester. Tis mkes the aparant discrepancy between the normal student and the high profile athlete appear particularly large. Non-basketball athletes (as in Lax) do not appear to have a similar discrepancy.
Perhaps the department is filled with extraordinarily succesfull and inspitring pegagogy..
fair enough. i was using the technical definition.
your point is well made, then
There are major difference between the way the school treats below average jock admissions and below average AA post acceptance. for the most part AA admissions are given exactly the same help that non-AA admissions are...essentially none. athletes on the other hand are given free tutoring, free books, access to tons of resources, are allowed to miss class due to training and there is a fair amount of pressure put on some teachers to pass them (at least 2 of my teachers openly complained about this in class at UCLA). Is it any surprise that a group that gets many advantages has a higher pass rate than a group that gets none?
followed by:
Heck, even at the law school I attnded there was school-sponsored support program for black 1Ls that met regularly, I would assume that the program was voluntary but I knew some people from my small section that participated.
Any one is going to be disadvantaged if they don't take advantage of what's offered to them.
Michigan does not have one that I am aware of. Although the goal of Michigan is not to flunk people out, it certainly expects to flunk out a certain portion of the school, since it knows that its ability to determine exactly who has the "skillset" to accomplish the things worthy of a Michigan degree is limited when it must formulate annual freshmen classes of 6,000. Indeed, failure to flunk out the more marginal people would devalue the degree for those who graduated to some degree.
They have a student run tutorial program for basic and popular courses. upper division and other non required courses typically don't have tutors. the athletic program had a more extensive tutorial program only open to athletes.
Any one is going to be disadvantaged if they don't take advantage of what's offered to them.
this is obviously true, but completely misses the point of my post. my point was that it was NOT offered to AA admissions but that it WAS offered to athletic students.
Having said that, equating the proposition "poor people are more likely to have their injustices become public knowldge [than non-poor people, I presume]" (the opposite of the proposition that Justin found "logically silly" with "the sun will rise in the East" reflects a mindset that I don't share.
I think that propositon prbably is true, but it is not a law of nature. Its truth is not evident, and may even be debatable.
I don't live or die by whether one person or another responds to my comments. Characterization of the proposition is not important per se, but is interesting, I think, because it reflects the assumptions of the speaker. As does my statement that this proposition is not serlf-evident.
Not sure of your point?
Despite all the advantages provided revenue athletes at U-Mich, they have one of the lowest grad rates in Div I athletics.
Point is that the putative tutorials and rescheduled exams and so forth are not enough unless the guys getting them are already extremely well-qualified. So the laxers did not get an academic break a la the revenue sports guys. Or they'd have a lower grad rate.
You missed the entire thread explaining how Michigan and Duke were different, no?
I doubt the administrators are all angels. But I think maybe the temptation for the administration to fudge admissions standards for the cliche reasons might be significantly less than at a normal school. Would tech school alumni donations go up on average if the school were clearly giving its all for athletics? Not necessarily, I think. And while wealthy donors and powerful friends could tempt anyone, I wonder whether they chose to tempt technical institutions as often as more general schools. At least when I was there, back in the 1980s, I think the curriculum for everyone started with reasonably serious calculus and physics. When someone with wealth or influence wants to create the appearance that an underqualified kid is highly qualified, how often do they choose the strategy of dropping the kid into freshman calculus and physics exams?
Thus a group which graduates at 100%--even including help--does not include large numbers of substandard admittees. This is in response to the question of whether these guys were all that smart, considering the help they got, to graduate.
IOW, they would probably have gotten into Duke absent lax.
- or even prison time - is in my mind more egregious than what Nifong did to the Duke lacrosse players. This case just seems a lot worse to some because the framed individuals had so much more to lose than your average criminal defendant.
But that's no excuse for the media's rush to judgment, or the bad behavior of the Duke faculty.
Are you sure you went to Michigan? What do you think happens in Schembechler Hall on the athletic campus everyday?
Also, Michigan Business School (Ross) does not fail anyone; in fact they don't even award letter grades. Trust me, I tried my darnedest to fail in b-school but couldn't.
Of course, non-athletes also sometimes take easy courses for that very reason. But, the social information networks concerning which classes and which professors are easy that athletes access tends to be superior.
The bottom-line is that preferences for athletes is less defensible than affirmative action. There is no plausible argument that athletes experience much negative discrimination. If anything, athletes tend to experience positive discrimination as our society tends to put athletes on a pedestal.
I think that resentment and backlash towards the privileged position that athletes tend to enjoy did find some irrational expression in the Duke lacrosse case. In response, there seems to be an equally irrational counterbacklash putting athletes even higher on a pedestal. I think that is what you see here in Stuart Taylor's borderline racist and inflammatory raising of athletic preferences (which are good since athletes are to be worshipped for all the supposedly positive things they bring) above affirmative action (Which should be condemned, because preferences for minorities are divisive leading to "self-segregation and discord." But the "self-segregation and discord" that arises from preferences for athletes who are not the academically most qualified should be ignored. I am wondering if Stuart Taylor is racist or just borderline racist. But actually, the more likely explanation is that this Stuart Taylor is merely experiencing an irrational reaction (putting athletes even higher on a pedestal) to the irrational backlash that was evident due to the Duke case (trying to not only remove the pedestal, but dig a little hole for athletes).
On the other hand, maybe Stuart Taylor is simply a racist. I hope not.
I think that this statement wrongly assumes that those who are worse of economically value their liberty less.
Actually, Stuart went farther than to question whether people are being selective in their dislike of preferences.
He mentioned only the positive things that supposedly come from athletic preferences:
He mentioned only the negative things that supposedly come from affirmative action:
It is a perfectly rational position to be against preferences for athletes but for affirmative action. And vice-versa. But one must be suspicious of someone who only sees discord and self-segregation with one policy, when in fact, these are a product of both policies.
Can you tell us what student group exhibits behavior which is stellar in every instance? Can you name anyone whose behavior is stellar in every instance?
One major reason is the NYT and many liberal MSM outlets did not publicize it and editrialize that rich, white students raped a poor, black, single mother. Another is that 88 faculty members have not taken out full page ads condemning the accused.
I consider overcoming racial discrimination to be an accomplishment.
As a white individual, I have heard racist comments from other and different whites on numerous occasions that they would not every say in public. Such as:
"Blacks need to learn to conform to white culture"
"I am fine with blacks as individuals, I just cannot stand the way the act in groups."
And, use of the N-word to refer to blacks negatively.
Racism, in both conscious and subconcious forms, still exists.
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Finally, there is nothing defensible about giving someone a preference for an accomplishment not relevant to the position they are applying for. If someone reaches level 99 playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons with most of their spare time, this should not be a plus when applying to play on a Football team. Why? Because this individual accomplishment has no relationship to the position applied for.
That's a defensible argument, although again, why single out college athletes? Colleges give credit in admissions for being high school student government president, for playing the violin, for charitable work, for being on the high school chess team. Why not for playing football?
Is there any reason you think that overcoming discrimination is not an individual accomplishment?
People who are black or Hispanic have faced discrimination with a higher probability than white males.
Granted, race is an imperfect and crude proxy for those who have overcome discrimination, and in an idea world we would gather particular and individualized knowledge of the obstacles an individual has faced. In fact, there are some improvements we could make. Like cutting off affirmative actions for blacks in positions of privilege. (The children of African elites comes to mind). However, there is a cost to individualized investigation. Indeed, too much investigation would mean that you are diverting resources from education and at some point decreasing the number of slots available as you engage in ever more investigation.(And there are also a cost of not undertaking such an investigation, in the form of increased discord, not to mention less ideal admissions.)
Affirmative action certainly has its problems. It probably should be reformed. (Although, I do not think that the "critical mass" justification of affirmative action is entirely without merit. Minorities - or anyone else, for that matter - who feels entirely isolated may have emotional difficulties as a result that interfere with the academic enterprise.) But, on the whole, I think that affirmative action is somewhat more defensible than athletic preferences. Athletes do not really face discrimination or any special hardship.
Do you have any doubts that the three examples I gave are clear examples of racism?
Also, I should note that there was no diatribe against Stuart Taylor. I just noted that Taylor's listing of only positive results of athletic preferences and only negative results of affirmative action is clearly irrational. (And, I should note, that I do not see you defending this.) My hope is that such irrationality is an emotional reaction in his rising up against those trying to cut down athletes rather than motivated by racial animus. My hopes notwithstanding, it is hard to say.
I am of the view that extra-curricular activities should not be considered unless they are very relevant to the proposed course of study, and they should get more weight to the extent they are relevant. I say very relevant, because I would be somewhat strict on what I considered relevant. Yes, team sports build social skills and social skills are valuable in all areas of life. But, I don't think that this should count. It is too speculative to assume that an athlete, just because he is an athlete in a team sport, has extraordinary social skills and that these social skills will be used to advance the academic enterprise when in fact they could very well be used to hinder it.
Thus, it might make sense to give an athlete who plans on majoring in, say, exercise biology, some credit that translates into a preference. But it would not make sense to give them a plus for majoring in economics or if they are undecided and thus there is no clear connection between their athletics and their course of study.
Everything you say sounds reasonable enough and would be sound advice if everyone was just looking at the Duke lacrosse fiasco. But most of the people getting out in front of this for one side or the other was or is using the case to push a pre-existing narrative that explains -- to them, at least -- the larger world. I would bet that most casual observers of the case in its early stages thought something pretty awful had gone on. Most people charged with serious crimes are, after all, guilty, and almost no one outside of whatever N.C. county Durham is located in, and not many natives, had any reason to think that D.A. Nifong wasn't playing it straight. Railroading innocent affluent white boys is not usually a smart political move and there was no readily apparent reason he'd want to do that. The allegations did fit rather comfortably into a familiar master narrative: privileged white boys treating lower-class black females as degraded sex toys in a racist, sexist society. This sort of thing happens, and certain people are predisposed to believe claims of this sort because it fits neatly into their general view of how the world works. Thus the Duke 88. Of course, we all tend to believe things that fit neatly into our general view of how the world works. There are people who see the real "lesson" of the Duke fiasco as proof of the baneful influence of trendy, lefty academics in soft disciplines indulging in identity politics. That's their master narrative and it sells more books these days than a dry as dust account of yet another random minority victim being screwed by a white-dominated criminal justice system. It is only rational for Taylor and Johnson to prefer to write a book that is likely to sell. I, for one, don't criticize them for it. But when you're on a book-flogging tour, be it the talk shows, book signings, or blog posts, you have to decide whether you're flogging your book, and therefore try to appeal to the widest possible audience by focusing on the book, or flogging your master narrative instead, and dropping hints on side issues to show the folks you're with that you're one of them.
Is your your point that other sitations are worse because police and prosecutors sometimes actually succeed in putting away people they know to be innocent? In this case, the prosecution and the police merely tried very hard to send the three LAX players away to prison, though they either knew or should have known that these guys were innocent.
Exactly what discrimination has the average black male born in 1990 faced? I'm asking about him, not his parents, grandparents, or any ancestor from 400 years ago. Who discriminats against him? In what areas? How?
Do you really want to go there?
Do you think that Selena Roberts, Duff Wilson, the editors in charge of the previous two entries, Barry Saunders, Bob Ashley, John Feinstein, Amanda Marcotte, any member of the gang of 88, Orrin Starn, Peter Wood, the clowns at Indy Week and Democratic Underground, Manju Rajahamana-don't really care, Sam Hummel, Georgia Goslee, the guy at sports law blog who wrote the worst column ever on this case, etc. have even considered for 1/1000 of a second voting GOP? Who are leftists in your opinion?
Reich's thing back in those days of activism (mid-60s) was student government, and he was quite animated as president of Dartmouths. I believe he got to know Hillary because she was Wellesley's student government president at the same time as he was Dartmouth's. He met glad-hander Bill and become a FOB at Oxford.