Stop Racial Discrimination in College Admissions | Hacker News Reader

Stop Racial Discrimination in College Admissions

sword.education

> We reached out to multiple legal resources and entities for representation. However, they either declined to take the case or failed to respond. Consequently, we are compelled to represent ourselves as pro se litigants.

Wondering what went wrong there ...

They don't have a smoking gun, and might not find one. At least person at UC with responsibility for (non-undergrad) admissions explained (on video) how they discriminate without leaving a paper trail.

UC administrators get to use taxpayers' own money to defend themselves from taxpayer lawsuits. They are well-resourced.

AIUI lawyers working on contingency get paid a cut of the damages. If that's correct, it might be hard. If someone didn't get into UC and proves it was due to illegal discrimination, how can they prove they suffered at least $ of damages? If they were to say 'well I had to pay out of state tuition at XYZ', UC could just say "well you were offered a place at UC Merced why didn't you just go there?".

Life is manifestly unfair. If Stanley can pull up his big boy pants and understand that important life lesson, he will be fine; he got a job offer at Google that normally requires a PhD, after all, right?

This is not the sword to fall on.

He and his father are trying to improve things for other people.

At the cost to yet others, no?

Yes, if you make a zero-sum system (like undergrad admissions at selective UCs) more fair, then this will come at a cost to those who would otherwise have been unfairly advantaged.

But thats the question: what is fair? I would allege that Steven will be just fine, no matter where he goes to school, but that others would receive more utility from the scarce resource of elite higher ed. I think that doing nothing is unfair as it just perpetuates the existing biases of our society!

In other words: your claim of "unfairly advantages" is a moral one, and not at all objective.

UC guarantees admission to the top 9 percent of California high school students.

Your logic seems to suggest that, instead, they should automatically deny entry to the top 9%, because they 'will be just fine'.

When a college basketball coach is selecting players from among the undergraduate population, should he reject the best few players, on the basis they will be fine anyway? If not, what makes basketball and computer science different?

The job of a basketball team is to win.

A university's mandate is quite different.

The job of a college basketball team is to develop talent.

Hmm...thats arguable.

But assuming thats the hook you want to hang your hat on, the guy in this post clearly had plenty of talent to beign with, and also many opportunities to develop it. Does he deserve all the opportunities? What entitles him? What entitles anyone to a scarce resource?

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