At the same time, though, grades aren’t everything. I had straight F all through high school, and a 3.9 in college.
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Now that I’ve actually read the article, I’m even more dumb-founded about the lawsuit. Fisher had a conditional acceptance. I’ve known plenty of kids that have gotten conditional acceptance, and while most gripe about it, it usually works out in the end. Fisher essentially had an opportunity to prove herself worthy enough to attend UT-Austin and turned it down.
The conditional acceptance works like this: the student has to attend school at another UT-System campus their freshman year, such as UT-San Antonio or UT-El Paso. It’s pretty open and they aren’t forced into any particular campus. They can then transfer to UT-Austin if their grades are up to par. Most kids I knew in the end still get to go to UT-Austin. Some even like the other school so much they don’t even ask to transfer. Even if their grades aren’t up to par for the transfer, they’re still attending a pretty decent school. Worst case scenario is they will not do well and get kicked out of the other school, but in that case they probably wouldn’t last at UT-Austin, either.
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Nah, he charges a premium due to his narrow focus on 16th century British aristocracy.
I thought the big “problem” in highly-selective admissions these days was Asian kids being disproportionately represented in the best schools. Not because of legacy family connections or having the scratch to hire someone to coach them and write their essays, but because their cultures put a lot more value on nose-to-the-grindstone academic achievement.
My extremely selective* high school had a lot of Asian kids. One of the academically best scoring of them would despair when he got a 97 on an exam because he knew his parents would castigate him – “What happened to the other three points?!”
I don’t have any sources at hand, but I have heard that Asians experience reverse-affirmative-action in college admissions. Basically what Fisher was suing about but maybe with some basis in reality. No prestigious American university is going to worry about having too many white kids, but it might look bad to their donors if it were too many Asians making their own kids look bad by comparison.
*Academically selective, not “can your parents buy us a new lacrosse field” selective.
Make everyone live in a squat for two yearsb and do some acid?
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“Strategic help” : now there’s a good euphemism for gaming the system. Yes, if a rich white defendant hires a high-priced lawyer to get him/her off for the same crime that poor person commits and ends up going to jail for - that’s gaming the system, since justice is supposed to be equal.
And when a rich, white kid can spend Mommy and Daddy’s money to buy a “personal” essay while a poor kid actually has to write theirs with at best some editing help from an overworked school counselor - yes, that’s gaming the system.
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literal gravedigger -= which writers did he bury?
There is generally no ethically deserving income from owning stuff.
The question is political, about fair distribution of ownership.
And professional service by all is needed until poverty and cultural misrecogniton are completely remedied.
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Well then by all means, first ting we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. That pesky 6th Amendment, too.
Well, but lawyers of critical to the smooth running of the system, and the ones who work with indigent defendents are often overworked and underpaid - which is often why many of them go into private practice. All people deserve a healthy defense, but only some people get it. There is an element of a rigged system with that. There is a reason why our jails are not filled with the upper classes and when the upper classes break the exact same laws, they tend to get lighter sentences - because they can afford a better, more focused, defense. I think that’s pretty effectively gaming the system, even if it’s not illegal.
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I agree completely, but the only solution is to hire a ton of PDs and pay them properly. And that means you-know-what.
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Gee! Where did anyone say anything like that? Well, Shakespeare did.
& the 6th Amendment? That applies to ALL defendants, not just the ones who
can afford a high-priced lawyer.
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But I think that’s been @Orwell’s point here, with regards to gaming the system, though (not to speak for them…). Yes, we need to have a well funded public defender system in place if we’re to have a fair and rather equitable outcome of justice for all defendants. If we want to live in a “rule of law” system, where everyone is equal before the law, then it’s a necessity and we need to put resources towards that, even if that means raising taxes. It’s not happening because our electoral system is so beholden to $$$$ above actually democratic practices. Until then, we live in a rigged system where not all of us are full citizens.
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No, that’s not what “gaming the system” means. That’s playing entirely within the laid-out rules the system itself is made of. “Gaming the system” would be something like feigning insanity so as to be declared incompetent to stand trial. Or hiring a professional to “edit” your application essay.
The law rules explicitly say you get a defense lawyer. How good or bad a lawyer you get usually depends on what you can afford, but a lawyer regardless.
The college admissions rules do not say that you get an “editor.”
The wealth advantage in legal proceedings isn’t “gaming the system”; it’s “rigging the system”.
From the POV of the folks who write the laws, immunity for the wealthy is a feature not a bug.
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Exactly. “Gaming” is exploiting loopholes/bugs to produce unexpectedly favorable outcomes for oneself.
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Side note: its nigh impossible to pretend to be crazy, lotta people try, but they all fail. You can act nuts and get nekkid and smear your poop all over your cell all you want. But a REAL crazy person will eat it. (this is not legal advice, do not eat your poop to be declared insane!)
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But they don’t say you don’t get one, either.
& yeah, it is gaming the system when you have an almost completely separate
set of standards for justice when you profess equal justice under the law,
simply because someone can afford to buy a team of lawyers and all that
goes with that.
Justice in America isn’t equal. All you have to do to find that out is read
or listen to the news.
Meaning rich people can afford a better defense, yay? Seems pretty gamey to me.
