Application Essays Utilized by UNC HS Program to Discriminate Against Potential Students Based on Race, Documents Reveal

I’ve been talking about this very topic with professors for years, only to be told I’m crazy for thinking that any school would go this far to cater to certain groups. Well… here ya go ladies and gents. Colleges do, in fact, make race a major player in their screening process. Your whiteness does, in fact, have a negative connotation attached to it, and your academic performance, in most cases, will not be enough to offset that sin of all sins.

Shocker.

From The College Fix:

The University of North Carolina uses essays to discriminate based on race, according to the analysis of a higher education scholar who obtained administrator emails.

“UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media hosts the annual Chuck Stone Program for Diversity in Education & Media, which offers 12 high schoolers the opportunity to receive hands-on journalism experience,” Neetu Arnold wrote in an article for the Daily Caller. “Program alumni who end up at the journalism school receive special services such as mentors and career preparation support.”

Arnold is a research fellow with the National Association of Scholars.

While the program is ostensibly open to all, “school officials actively consider race behind closed doors.”

“In a 2022 email obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, a graduate student managing the applications for the UNC program asked her supervisor how she could ‘determine race and gender’ of applicants who did not indicate such identities,” Arnold reported.

Program director Livis Freeman said she could “usually tell from their essays.” Freeman was responding to an email from doctoral fellow Shanetta Pendleton who had asked how to “determine the race and gender if it’s not in the application.”

“As universities increasingly introduce subjective evaluation criteria to deal with the blowback against affirmative action, we should remember that these metrics invite every kind of prejudice imaginable,” Arnold wrote. “Nobody should have to wonder if they were excluded from an opportunity because of their skin color.”

Before you come for me… I know this concerned a “diversity” program with high school students, but do we really think the same thing isn’t being done at every stage of admission?

I have no patience for this kind of thing. We have so many incompetent people in places of power right now, and for caring so much about “root causes,” you’d think the libs would see this as one of the more concerning examples. That doesn’t really serve their political agenda, though, huh? Idiots in prime positions are kinda their whole shtick…

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that my blood boils on this issue for personal reasons too. After being told by my professors for two years that there was “no way” that I would have to worry about scholarship opportunities, it was depressing to see how far from the truth that turned out to be. A 4.0 GPA, and more letters of recommendation than I needed, and there was still nothing but crumbs.

Thankfully I would rather retain my common sense and competence instead of selling out for the cash, but still… Hard work won’t get you anywhere in academia anymore unless you’re willing to parrot what someone else wants to hear (at least that I’ve seen).

When the next few generations are left scratching their heads as to where we went wrong and why everything sucks so hard, I encourage them to start with the “work for what you want” thing. Stop giving handouts if you want there to be any incentive to continue working hard. That is, of course, assuming that the next few generations have any common sense left to realize that something went wrong…