Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 1001 posts

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#101

Post by rufus_foreman »

Spivak wrote: post #38

> Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But this is affirmative action. What did they strike down? Also god damn I hate this supreme court for overruling their own decisions. Even the ones I would personally benefit from. This is going to ruin the…

>> Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.

The decision continues with:

"But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.) "[W]hat cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows," and the prohibition against racial discrimination is "levelled at the thing, not the name.""

They are warning the universities to not play games with them.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#102

Post by ketchupdebugger »

kelipso wrote: post #69
forinti wrote: post #28

I would like to see lotteries used for this type of thing, because they would be much easier to accept. You could have 10% or 20% percent of candidates chosen by lottery, or have a lottery for all candidates who have the minimum pre-requisites, etc. Some sort of randomness whould guarantee a diversity of candidates and would even span across dimensions which are not even considered currently.

[flagged]

its basically a lottery today when admission rate for top tier colleges is like 5%.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#103

Post by catiopatio »

peruvian wrote: post #88
zapataband1 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your family benefited from it and taking it away is now 'good' then it sounds like you're saying you couldn't care less about any future generations who could've used this ladder to better their lives. As the immigrant, much like your father, whose father is a construction worker, that's how it reads.

This. “I got mine so no one else needs it”. And sorry GP but you absolutely got into MIT partly because of your ethnicity - along with your grades of course. I benefited from that as well and it was fairly clear.

The problem is that it’s a zero sum game - if you’ve benefited from it, then someone else was discriminated against on the basis of their race for your benefit.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#104

Post by JustBreath »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #15
JustBreath wrote: post #8

Whatever your opinion about recent supreme court decisions, this has all underscored what has been true for a long time: Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. If it only takes 5 out of 9 people to make laws for 600 million, it only takes one seat change to revert them. (Edit: sorry, 300 - pre-caffeine posting)

Laws aren't (and can't) be written to cover all current and future use cases. The judicial branch is meant to provide interpretation of the law. Federal courts enjoy the sole power to interpret the law, determine the constitutionality of the law, and apply it to individual cases. The courts, like Congress, can compel the production of evidence and testimony through the use of a subpoena. https://www.whitehouse.gov/ab…

It's true laws don't account for the future. It's also true that laws can be created and updated by other means and quite often the judicial branch is used as a fast pass extension of the legislative branch.

The problem when you do this - especially on questionable legal arguments - is you're essentially setting up the future to have to fight for that right all over again, as we've seen with Roe v. Wade.

You can't take a section of the constitution that's about citizenship, infer a right to privacy and then extend that to abortion and not expect that flimsy foundation to be challenged later when the right 5 people happen to be present.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#105

Post by mucle6 »

ketchupdebugger wrote: post #90
mucle6 wrote: post #71

I can see the social good of admitting disadvantaged groups, but how does it help the individual colleges? I can't come up with a clear path from increased diversity to increased profitability. I must be missing something because for profit entities don't do things out of the kindness of their heart.

yes but Harvard is not a for profit entity.

I still find it hard to believe Harvard, with a 50 Billion dollar endowment decided to do something good for society if they though it would hurt them. I feel like colleges must have data to show bottom line benefits for affirmative action

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#106

Post by splendor_spoon »

kelipso wrote: post #69
forinti wrote: post #28

I would like to see lotteries used for this type of thing, because they would be much easier to accept. You could have 10% or 20% percent of candidates chosen by lottery, or have a lottery for all candidates who have the minimum pre-requisites, etc. Some sort of randomness whould guarantee a diversity of candidates and would even span across dimensions which are not even considered currently.

[flagged]

Why assume this is a 'leftists' idea?

> ...leftism is appealing to many who want to avoid work, so they won't be familiar with the concept of having their hard work pay off

You seem unfamiliar with the values of those you classify as 'leftist'.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#107

Post by kenjackson »

kelipso wrote: post #69
forinti wrote: post #28

I would like to see lotteries used for this type of thing, because they would be much easier to accept. You could have 10% or 20% percent of candidates chosen by lottery, or have a lottery for all candidates who have the minimum pre-requisites, etc. Some sort of randomness whould guarantee a diversity of candidates and would even span across dimensions which are not even considered currently.

[flagged]

The idea is that there are more kids who could succeed at the college than there are spots. So find the right bar and do lottery.

A lot of this comes down to what you think the mission of college is. Is it to educate the highest achieving kids who apply? Or to graduate a certain type of student? Or something else?

For me I know it’s not just to educate the highest achieving kids. If the top college in the world ended up accepting all terrorists who were trained to be exceptional students that wouldn’t sit right with me. Even if I could acknowledge they had the best academic records. That seems like such a shallow goal for university.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#109

Post by HDThoreaun »

coolhand2120 wrote: post #87
zapataband1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think he might be talking about "Racism in US college admission has been banned" which sounds like a good thing. Do you argue that Asian and Indian students should be rejected because of their race in favor of less qualified black or Hispanic students? I would love to hear your case for why that is ok.

"Less qualified" opens a can of worms. If one student spent twice as long studying does that make them more likely to have a high income after they graduate? Because in the end that's what these schools are looking for, "How do we admit the people who will be the most successful in their career?" Just looking at grades and test scores can't figure that out. Academic success may be correlated with cultural values in a way that income isn't.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#110

Post by newacct3 »

Considering the failure and timing of prop 16 and overall makeup of the California electorate compared to rest of country, official discrimination on the basis of race likely won't return in higher ed. Also consider that prop 16 failed by double digits with the pro-discrimination crowd outspending the opposition 19x

What I'm curious about is this: the Harvard decision is wrt a private entity, the court ruled that they discriminated against whites and asians

Could racially discriminatory hiring strategies be next? Could this trigger a wave of litigation?

Post reply on HN