Stonecypher's Suit of Sour Grapes

I don't know Mark Stonecypher, but I'm sure I knew people like him in high school: driven, hardworking, fiercely competitive and bitterly resentful when they don't come out ahead.

People like Stonecypher are not accustomed to failure, and they don't react well when it confronts them. But what makes Stonecypher different from the other obnoxiously ambitious and immature kids who believe they are entitled to all they seek is that most of them do not sue when things don't go their way.

This year, Stonecypher is a student at Vanderbilt, but only because he did not win admission to Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale or Stanford. Unable to accept this nearly unanimous rejection as a sign that he wasn't Ivy League material (or at least that there were other students more suited for admission than he was), Stonecypher blamed a flaw in admissions policies. After all, how could these schools reject Mark Stonecypher, salutatorian of his class at John Carroll High School in Birmingham, Alabama?

Never mind that more than ten thousand applicants to Harvard are rejected each year, many of them salutatorians or even valedictorians of their respective high school classes. What made Stonecypher so sure that he had been screwed was the fact that Harvard accepted his African-American classmate, Eugenia Kay Harris.

Sounding the call of "reverse discrimination" (which ranks among racially charged phrases like "quota queen" and "welfare mother"), Stonecypher and his parents have filed a complaint with the Department of Education alleging that Harvard discriminates against (gasp!) white males.

It doesn't matter that Eugenia Harris was, in fact, valedictorian of Carroll High School. Stonecypher insists she took easier courses and had lower SAT scores than he did.

Stonecypher's complaint is an interesting, though hardly original, attack on an admissions policy that seeks to produce a well-qualified and--yes--diverse student population.

If people like Stonecypher had their way, academic accomplishment and standardized test scores would be the only criteria for college admissions. Obviously, these measures should play a significant, and even dominant, role in determining whom Harvard admits. After all, this school is, first and foremost, an academic institution. But people who advocate relying solely on grades and test scores make a number of false assumptions.

First, they incorrectly assume that academic standards alone would suffice to distinguish between the eligible and the unqualified. The truth is that most applicants to Harvard are "qualified" for admission. But even if Harvard had a policy of accepting only valedictorians, it would still have to reject a number of applicants--and Mark Stonecypher would not even be eligible for consideration.

Far too many academically qualified students seek Harvard admission; academic prowess cannot adequately determine who receives the mythical big envelope in the mail. Without examining other criteria--region, race, background, extracurricular experience, interests and special skills--it would be impossible to decide whom to admit. An admissions system that relied solely on academics would ultimately and necessarily result in admissions far more arbitrary than they lready are: admissions officers would have to randomly select 2,000 names from the pool of thousands of "qualified" applicants.

Second, oppressed white males like Stonecypher falsely assume that factors like grades and standardized test scores are superior to other criteria because they are objective. In fact, no objective measure exists to determine who deserves admission to Harvard or any other school.

Grades are not objective because academic expectations and requirements vary from school to school, and even from class to class within a school. That may be why Eugenia Kay Harris was valedictorian if Mark Stonecypher's claims that the took more difficult courses are true. An `A' in underwater basketweaving may have the same effect on grade point average as an `A' in calculus, but they say different things about a person's academic ability. Similarly a `B' at one school (or from one teacher) may represent the same accomplishment as an `A' at another.

Nor are standardized test scores the Mecca of objectivity that people like Stonecypher seek. The value of these tests has long been disputed, and studies have suggested that the tests carry a cultural bias and measure not intelligence or aptitude, but very specific knowledge.

With no objective measure of a person's qualifications to attend Harvard, it is fitting that Harvard relies on more than one or two subjective criteria. By considering not only grades and test scores, but also demonstrated leadership ability, interesting cultural or educational background and other factors, Harvard has a better chance of assembling a representative and even a more qualified student population.

Third, Stonecypher and other members of the Harvey C. Mansfield school of thoughtless rhetoric wrongly assume that students accepted as a result of criteria that include, but are not limited to, academics are not qualified to perform academically here. At their most extreme, these people argue that when race is a consideration, schools like Harvard are forced to accept underqualified African-American students to ensure a diverse student body.

This commonly repeated assault on admissions policies is ludicrous. Only 143 African-American students registered as first-years here on Monday-a record high for Harvard. Anyone who suggests that some or all of these students are underqualified is implicitly arguing that there are not 143 African Americans in the high school class of 1993 with the academic qualifications to excel at Harvard (and the desire to attend). If this claim is not racist, it comes damn close.

Of course, the problem is fostering that desire to attend Harvard. When the College registered an embarrassingly low number of African-American students last year, this problem became clear. The result was an increased effort to recruit African-Americans--an effort which included a second round of recruitment letters and some extensions of the application deadline. And although this effort may have been a bad public relations move, it was not necessarily bad policy. Any attempt to increase the number of applicants from all backgrounds is worthy, and there is nothing inherently good about a rigid application deadline.

Obviously, academic prowess should be the primary consideration for Harvard's admissions officers. But it should not be the only consideration. There is absolutely nothing discriminatory about examining a number of factors in an effort to produce a student population that will expose its members to the cultural differences, unique experiences, and diverse interests and talents that comprise American society.

Claims to the contrary are either ignorant, intolerant or the immature whining of a kid who can't face rejection.