January 24, 2007--"I So Good At Math"

Many college and university faculty and administrators these days refer to Asian students as the “new Jews.” They may or may not be attempting to pay them a compliment; but by this, they sort of mean that Asians are now their best, highest-achieving students. Just the way Jews used to be.

The other side of this acknowledgement, also just as it used to be applied to Jews, is the ugly fact of the Asian-admissions quota.

This first came to widespread attention when various extra-highly-selective University of California campuses were overwhelmed by too, too many extra-highly-qualified Asian applicants. So many with perfect high school GPAs and SAT scores that if they had admitted all who were “qualified,” there would have been less and less room in their freshman classes for Anglo students. Thus, it was demonstrated by Asian rights groups, these colleges set limits on the percentage of Asian students they would admit—a sort of affirmative action program in reverse for the benefit of white students.

Asians are already disproportionately represented at most of the nation’s most selective institutions—though they make up just 5 percent of the population, at Harvard 18 percent are Asian, at Stanford 24 percent, and at the University of California at Berkeley they comprise fully 46 percent of all undergraduates.

At Princeton, where 14 percent are Asian, there is a controversy currently raging about alleged bias against them in admissions practices. Jian Li claims that though he was an easily-admissible candidate he was rejected because he is Asian, and he has filed a high-profile discrimination suit against the university. (He is currently attending Yale.)

Things became even more heated when the student newspaper, The Daily Princetonian, published an article that its editors claim was a parody in which an Asian student is quoted as writing—

Hi Princeton! Remember me? I so good at math and science. Perfect 2400 SAT score. Ring bells? Just in cases, let me refresh your memories. I the super smart Asian. Princeton the super dumb college, not accept me. What is wrong with you no color people? Yellow people make the world go round.

And so on.

As reported in the NY Times, the editor, Chanakya Sethi, who is of Indian descent, responded—

We embraced racist language in order to strangle it. At its worst, the column was a bad joke; at its best, it provoked serious thought about issues of race, fairness and diversity.

Provoke it did. But I wonder if someone like Mr. Sethi, with I assume his perfect SAT scores, might have been able to find other ways to engender “discourse” (a favorite word on campus). For example, through an examination of Princeton’s history of setting racial, religious, and ethnic quotas; and how his college is likely doing the same now with applicants from the very same continent where his parents were born.