<p>@collegealun314</p>
<p>"To answer your question Hunt, I think the author does believe that the system can and is gamed. "</p>
<p>Agreed. </p>
<p>In my academic careers with several elite schools, I have personally met students who openly admitted that they gamed the admission systems in various ways.</p>
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But come on, the readers of the Journal are not exactly a prime audience for humor. Have you ever looked at the cartoons it publishes?</p>
<p>Again, humor is in tge eye of the beholder. Obviously, since humor is often at the expense of a specific group of people, ut is natural that the butts of the jokes find it a whole lot less funny. </p>
<p>The problem, as I perceive it, starts when looking at that effort as more than a silly and probably misguided stack of juvenile observations. If she tried to be funny and nothing else, she scored with a portion of her audience.</p>
<p>If she tried to be satirical, she failed miserably. Because the issues she decide to deride are deserving a lot better than kindergarten humor, and a lot more maturity from the so-called writer.</p>
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<p>However, that brings up the fact that the WSJ tends to attract a mostly conservative highly privileged readership who tend to strongly oppose AA or sometimes even non-racially-based allowances for lower-SES backgrounds and yet, support legacy admissions. </p>
<p>One only needs to glance at their editorial page or their links to conservative/libertarian groups like the Cato institute to see how Susy Lee Weiss’ writing is really a form of preaching to the choir in that particular publication.</p>
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<p>But, Xiggi, I’m not sure I know what you mean by this. Are they deserving better than this humor because they are not real issues? Or are they deserving of more seriousness because they ARE real issues?</p>
<p>I’m confused.</p>
<p>ETA: I see you edited your second paragraph, thanks.</p>
<p>Actually, I don’t see it as more than a juvenile response to admissions from a 17 year old. Maybe the problem comes from expecting her to be an adult when she is not.</p>
<p>I just read the article again, and I think what’s wrong with it is that there are too many cheap shots. For example, in my opinion it falters as soon as she refers to “two moms.” It shows a bit of a tin ear to complain about not being gay at the same moment when inequality is in the news (although I guess we don’t know when this was actually written). Some parts of the article are clever and funny, but it needed better editing. Perhaps we can blame the WSJ for that.</p>
<p>It’s not whether the issues are real, whether a URM may have an edge or some kid pretended to run a charity that daddy really structured and supported or a kid got that internship thru connections. It’s about the article as it was written. The tone and visuals.</p>
<p>The underlying issues are worthy of a more serious analysis. The underlying issues are that we STILL have to offer crutches to a large segment of the population to level the playing field. For instance, after decades of attempts to correct the inequalities, we still HAVE to rely on Affirmative Action. Those issues deserve a serious analysis, and deserve more than bandaids on wooden legs. And definitely more than froebellian humor.</p>
<p>Okay, Xig, fair enough. But, I don’t think she’s going to be able to solve our K-12 train wreck til she gets through college, at least.</p>
<p>But, you will get no argument from me that we have some serious splaining to do about why we are failing our kids in K-12.</p>
<p>Sure, the underlying issues are <em>worthy</em> of more serious analysis, but that was not the point of the piece. It was a summation of the college admissions process, seen through the eyes of a rejected 17 year old.</p>
<p>I think it is silly for people active on this website, to act as though no one should humorously question a system that sometimes seems to use downright silly criteria for admissions. Applicants do write about their minority status, their sexual orientation, their amazing volunteer trips to Africa, and then half the crowd gets up in arms that those are the things that adcoms care about for college admissions. She was just saying what a lot of people think about the process, in an ironic, cynical, satirical teenage tone. It worked for me.</p>
<p>Bay, what summation? That it requires two moms and a fake charity? That white kids need to wear feathers or that gay is a hook? </p>
<p>I’ll say it again: what if, in the guise of humor, she said, if she knew then what she knows now, she would have carried a boom box thru the halls? Some will laugh. Some will say, well she really means urms get an edge. But is it fair to portray Black kids that way? Really funny to suggest a headdress? We should give her credit for not adding going whoopwhoopwhoop down the halls?</p>
<p>Btw, half the crowd can get upset about what matters to adcoms- somehow without getting what matters to adcoms. Just what they think does.</p>
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<p>Our differences in opinion might stem from using different definitions for terms such as satire. Not all satire is humorous, or intends to be funny, but the genre has a precise objective. And one has to seriously doubt that this superficial effort was meant to be satirical, and again if it did, it failed miserably. At no point does THAT kind of approach inspire anyone to think about making positives changes.</p>
<p>On a personal level, I also think that, beyond the intellectual debate of what constitutes satire versus irony versus cheap cynicism, my reaction to that oped was … well, it is great that the adcoms are silly enough to reward the headdresses-wearing and 1/32 Navajos if the result is that the underachieving and obnoxious person described in the article received the cold shoulder.</p>
<p>Nothing CC hasn’t seen before.</p>
<p>She didn’t say those things, looking forward. It’s pointless to argue about boom boxes when she didn’t say it. </p>
<p>I don’t even know what she was referring to when she said headdress. Is there a certain racial/ethnic group that uses that terminology?</p>
<p>If you want to claim that no one uses their race, parental situation, or orientation as a relevant point of interest for adcoms, then I’d agree with you that her comments were out of line.</p>
<p>Btw, looking forward, if I remember correctly, in another thread you heavily criticized volunteer trips abroad as tantamount to “fake” volunteer work. If I’m confusing you with someone else, I apologize.</p>
<p>Thanks CuriousJane for the personal story.
I can understand your point of view. But my kid was also asked to be hold off for one year at preschool. I didn’t take it as an offense. I really believe the principal was for the interest of our kid and I could see her reasoning. We finally decided not to follow her advice and we are happy with our decision now.</p>
<p>Bay, you really do not understand her headdress remark? She’s referring to the Native American headdress we usually see in those old Hollywood movies about cowboys and Indians, but that were actually worn by SOME Natives in SOME tribes under SOME circumstances. Here is some information about them and their history: [Pow</a> wow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pow_wow]Pow”>Pow wow - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>I have a Native friend and she has made an entire Native outfit for special ceremonies, but since HER tribe did not use headdresses in their powwows, she does not have one. </p>
<p>As to the boombox, maybe a more accurate term for the writer’s mocking would have been cornrows, as like headdresses, they are usually associated with a certain ethnicity-African Americans. Do you know what THOSE are? </p>
<p>If you really don’t get why some are offended by the WSJ piece, I’m not going to convince you. But not everyone is ok with the offhand “humor” directed at various ethnic and personal identifiers that they take very seriously.</p>
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<p>Their US readership is 82 percent male, average age 57, average HHI $257,100, average net worth $2.6 million.</p>
<p>I’m sure many here have read “The Gatekeepers”. IIRC (and it’s been a few years since I’ve read it), its underlying message was not all that different from the WSJ column, albeit from a different perspective.</p>
<p>Yes, you are right, sseasom, I know what a Native American headdress is, but it did not occur to me that she was referring to something that to my knowledge and experience, no one wears anymore. I even looked up the definition in 3 dictionary sources, and native Americans were not mentioned, nor were any other ethnicities.</p>