More Virginia “Diversity”

Two days I ago I discussed (here) the Student Bar Association at the University of Virginia encouraging students to sign a pledge of allegiance to “diversity.” And today, because of this recent article in the student-run Cavalier Daily, I find it necessary to discuss “diversity” at UVa one more time. You might get the idea that the University of Virginia is obsessed with/fixated on “diversity.” (If you did, you’d be right.)

It’s not as though “diversity” is the only thing UVa has to worry about. Indeed, some misguided souls might think the fact that the University’s endowment (listed at $4.3 billion in July 2007) lost $1.3 billion since last July was a more pressing concern.

Still, the University’s Board of Visitors is never too busy, never too worried about mundane things like money, to fret and wring its hands trying to figure out new ways to promote “diversity.” True to form, the Cavalier Daily article linked above reports on some of the “diversity” discussion at the last Board of Visitors meeting.

There are a couple of notable things about this article, written by Cavalier Daily associate editor Kate Colwell, one having to do with form and the other with substance. Let me discuss the form first.

Not to mince words, some of the quotes border on incoherence. Now that could be for many reasons: haste in taking notes, haste in writing, haste in editing (if, indeed, this piece was edited), typos, or … perfectly accurate quotes of borderline incoherent comments. Anyway, here are a few examples of why this piece is difficult to read:

• “It’s pretty clear that the Common Application is a factor in having an increased number of applicants than last year,” said Bill Harvey, vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity…. “We’re all encouraged by the applicant pool situation being larger from last year,” Harvey said.
• “In minority applicant numbers, we’ve stayed relatively the same the past 10 years,” Student Board member Adom Getachew. To change this trend, “it’s important to think about more effective means of outreach, growing your own, and considering what kinds of resources and commitments that will take for the University,” [First sentence needs something like an “according to student board member…” or “ … Adom Getachew said.” Second sentence: a) a trend is something that changes, not stays the same; b) growing your own? How does a university grow its own minority students? c) sentence should end with a period, not a comma.]
• “We’ve done a great job of letting people know we are discrete of diversity,” [Board member Warren] Thompson said, adding, though, that the University needs to improve its efforts to prepare students from diverse backgrounds so that those students can compete at the University’s high academic standards. [a) discrete of diversity? b) Does the University really have an obligation to select some unprepared “diverse” students and prepare them for UVa? If it picked only “diverse” students, wouldn’t any un-“diverse” students who were not selected for this special preparation have a valid discrimination claim?]

This sort of reporting is disappointing, even (especially?) in a student newspaper — unless, of course, this sort of speaking is disappointing from members of the Board of Visitors and a University “vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity.”

Despite its disappointing form, this article did have some substance, primarily its reporting of some very interesting numbers:

According to data from the Office of Undergraduate Admission, to date the University has received applications from 11,632 females and 10,315 males. Among these applicants were 1814 Asian females compared to 1747 males, 806 black females compared to 554 black males and 475 Latino females compared to 391 Latino males.

Some Board of Visitor members expressed concern, however, about the discrepancies between minority females and males. Board member Syd Dorsey questioned whether the number of black women who come to the University to play Division I basketball further skews these figures. She suggested that if scholarship athletes were removed from the pool, the discrepancy between females and males may be even greater.

Let’s leave aside the question of how many blacks, male as well as female, are on athletic scholarships and compare the number of applicants quoted above for next fall’s entering class by race with the data provided here showing the racial composition of this year’s freshman class, which entered in Fall 2008.

• Asians are 16% of 2009 applicants and 11% of current freshmen;

• Blacks are 6% of 2009 applicants and 8.7% of current freshmen.

Note that Asians are 4.8% of Virginia’s population (as of 2006), and blacks are 19.9%, but also note that UVa receives many applications from outside Virginia. Currently about a third of UVa undergraduates are not Virginia residents.

This comparison of applicants to enrollees says nothing, obviously, about the relative qualifications of members of different groups. That information is difficult to come by, but five years ago the Center for Equal Opportunity and the Virginia Association of Scholars did manage to get this data, and CEO’s report is quite revealing of how UVa goes about engineering “diversity.” (There is little reason to suspect that the findings would be dramatically different if conducted again today.) The report summarizes some of the more dramatic findings as follows:

The largest differences in the likelihood of admission at UVA occur for the SAT ranges 950 to 1350, where more than 70% of black students are admitted compared to only about 25% of white students. About half of all white applicants score in this range, compared to more than three- fourths of black applicants. The median SAT score for all UVA admissions is 1350, while the average for admitted black students is 1026.

Nearly 65% of all black applicants were admitted in the Fall of 2003, compared to 36 to 38% of all other groups. Looking at this report again for this post (one of my old professors used to say that scholars never read anything; they always re-read), I think some of its finding are even more dramatic. Keeping in mind that the median SAT score for entering students in 2003 was 1350, note the following:

• Of students scoring 850 – 950 on the SAT, 25% of black applicants were admitted, 24% of whites, and 0% (none, nada) of Asians;

• Of students scoring 950 – 1050, 52% of black were admitted, 15% of whites, and 8% of Asians;

• Of students scoring 1050 – 1150, 72% of blacks were admitted, 21% of whites, and 11% of Asians;

In fact, it is worth emphasizing that in every SAT test range a smaller percentage of Asians than whites were admitted.

A few days ago I discussed (here) a recent change in admissions policy at the University of California that will significantly reduce the number of Asians admitted, and I cited, among other sources, an excellent article by Stephan Thernstrom on the same subject titled “Staving Off The Yellow Peril.”

Perhaps California can take some lessons from Virginia, which seems to have decided years ago that more “diversity” requires fewer Asians.