An Admission to Women
Our school clearly discriminates against one major demography in admission to Swarthmore. “Which demography?” you cry out. “Which minority has received the harsh penalty of a world still rife with bigotry and prejudice, the insidious influence of which pervades even the safe haven of Swarthmore?”
My readers may be surprised that the group of people which face a disadvantage in their applications to Swarthmore are not actually a minority, neither in their percent of applications to Swarthmore, nor in the US population, nor in the world population. Nevertheless, the effects of discrimination is not new to them. They are women.
Consider our recent history as reported by Swarthmore’s Common Data Set. While in the past four years 56% to 60% of applicants to Swarthmore are women, those the school admitted included only 51–52% women. Once given an admittance, women are slightly more likely to accept and enroll, which brings the percent of men and women at Swarthmore fairly consistently to 52% women and 48% men. These results were confirmed by Jim Bock, Dean of Admissions (personal communication, 02/14/09).
Over the past four years, this pattern has gotten worse: following a national trend of college applications, the percent of women applying to Swarthmore has constantly increased relative to men, while our admittance of them remains constant. In the interests of maintaining a student gender balance of close to 50–50, the school is culling out women applicants. Put another way, men get affirmative action at Swarthmore.
Now, I’m not sure where I stand on affirmative action, as for every person it benefits, someone else is harmed. Affirmative action based on guilt is shameful behavior, demeaning to all parties involved. For instance, claiming we must admit African-American students because many white Americans – and some free black Americans—once held slaves, reduces the purpose of college admission to a false exculpation of crimes committed on long-dead people by long-dead people.
Affirmative action based on current inequalities, however, certainly bears discussion. For instance, many argue that since many minorities are disenfranchised even today in our own society, affirmative action could be an appropriate way for private schools to use their wealth and power for good in society. By taking into consideration the societal and educational advantage that some have and handicapping them (or, to take a positive spin on it, giving a boost to those with a disadvantage), colleges can begin to smooth out the rumpled fabric of our society and provide a more equal access to higher education.
To accomplish still different goals, affirmative action is sometimes carried out to create a rich and diverse student body. In our current academic environment learning is bound to the students because faculty generally either have no belief system or are unwilling to impose it in a misguided attempt not to stifle students’ learning. Thus the folks to the left and right of you (speaking metaphorically here, not politically) are the ones who are going to be influencing your way of thinking, not the fellow or lady at the front.
To be fair, there is a lot of truth to this, even if you may disagree with the pedagogical power of the professor in the classroom. Your professor doesn’t have dinner with you after class, doesn’t go to your parties, doesn’t swing by your room at midnight to pour his heart’s concerns out to you. Your classmates do. They are like colleagues and friends and lovers and siblings all rolled into one. Fellow students have impact, and I can understand the desire to create a rich student body out of more than just rich students. After all, the type of students here is a major reason people attend Swarthmore, right after its academic reputation. I have benefited immensely from my eclectic peers – though, when we are really honest with ourselves, we have to admit that Swarthmore students all share a huge amount in common which tends to cross boundaries of gender, skin color, or class background.
We would do more for increasing diversity if we stopped admitting the self-selectors into Swarthmore through eliminating Early Decision and targeted for recruitment and admission students who don’t thrive on feeling busy, who don’t have a fantasy love affair with President Obama, and who own cars (to take the first three examples of things which seem to typify Swarthmore students). But that would make our school a very different and possibly quite frighteningly normal place. Even this author only fits one of those criteria. But I digress.
Affirmative action of this type bears reconsideration – since one weird side effect of all this affirmative action is that fewer equally qualified women are getting in than men. This is particularly odd, since women are ideal students when contrasted with men: college women study more, earn better grades, are more likely to graduate, and are less likely to commit infractions. Even if men were equally qualified, is sacrificing women worth having a gender-balanced college?
In China many people are worried about the birth rate disparity that has been going on since the one-child policy became instituted. Currently about 100 girls are born for every 108 men. When you fast-forward twenty years, you have the problem today, in which there is still this gender disparity. This results in millions of unmarried and presumably sexually frustrated young Chinese men (though another survey indicating that nearly two thirds of Chinese men have visited a prostitute may indicate they are less sexually frustrated than we previously thought; nevertheless, regardless of one’s views on prostitution, it is not a long-term solution).
The same could happen at Swarthmore! Our penchant for and the devoted reading of the sex columns (not to mention the piercing insights into the social-sexual lives of Swatties penned by Adam Dalva and Fletcher Wortman in semesters past) indicate that even now Swarthmore may have sexual problems without adding the destabilizing factor in China of a gender imbalance. Throw in the fact that there are no convenient houses of pleasure, and by restricting the admittance of women, we may be creating a powder-keg of sexually and academically frustrated young men.
Making the assumption that we are not for some unfathomable reason getting swathes of unqualified female applicants (though women consistently scored about 60 points lower than men on the old SAT, performance in college is still better), I am in favor of admitting the genders in equal proportions to their applications. That’s not just because I believe in the power of statistics and the law of large numbers (increased numbers of women on campus would increase my chances of getting a date!), but also because we are unjustly handicapping women in order to create a gender balance in higher education is accepting a great moral cost to achieve a fairly shallow goal.
Admitting women and men in equal proportions to their applications would result in a significant enough imbalance to cause harm, and thus the current discrimination against women applicants is unjustified and even wrong. Swarthmore has long been proud of our coeducational status since our very foundation. Perhaps now we should stop living in a Orwellian socialist utopia in which all genders are equal, but some are more equal than others.
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#1: 2/17/2009 at 2:05 a.m.
I'm glad that Chris has tried to tackle issues of general interest to the Swarthmore Community.
That being said, I'm really what this article is trying to get across.
I'm all for a strong balance of gender representation at Swarthmore. We're a co-ed school and thus I think an evenly split student body is ideal.
I'd like to point a few things out. First off: Chris has reduced affirmative action to "claiming we must admit African-American students because many white Americans – and some free black Americans—once held slaves, reduces the purpose of college admission to a false exculpation of crimes committed on long-dead people by long-dead people."
Seriously? First off, slavery's impact on our nation continues today in a major, measurable fashion. Second off, affirmative action goes beyond white guilt. The aim of affirmative action policies is to help disadvantaged students -- facing systematic inequity in *today's* world -- get into college. Now, affirmative action isn't perfect as a system, but it sure as heck can't be reduced in the way that it is in this article.
Where did the discussion of women-as-sexual-tension-relievers come from? Why is this mentioned? Is this a joke, blatant objectification of women, or both?
Also, on a side note, not every man needs a woman to relieve his sexual needs.
— Clarice | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#2: 2/17/2009 at 2:07 a.m.
A correction:
I meant to say --
"That being said, I'm not really sure what this article is trying to get across."
— Clarice | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#3: 2/17/2009 at 5:59 a.m.
A point that I was waiting for you to make as a natural continuation of the ideas that you presented is that the group of people who are being passed over because of what you're terming "affirmative action" (women) is actually the group that's on the disadvantaged side of gender oppression.
— Lang Haynes | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#4: 2/17/2009 at 11:23 a.m.
To respond to Lang's point, I suppose you could say that a) women in the working world after graduation are typically lower-paid, and/or in other places, under performers. But b) whether this is because a small chunk of women aren't gaining access to resources (such as schooling) at post-secondary educational institutions of their choice is debatable.
However, Green does say that we would do "more for diversity" by eliminating the ED component of our admissions system, and so does suggest that keeping our genders roughly equal adds somewhat to diversity. My personal view coincides with this concession. In a definitively gendered world, ensuring "equal access" on this campus to both men and women means that I will experience many sides of a debate, or find many friends for a common interest. Hanging around a Parrish hall (which for some is a great place, no doubt) makes me uncomfortable. A gendered hall in Parrish is an extreme case, but imagine if for every man you saw two women instead. It might be a little closer to creating a hegemonic female culture here. Arguably, you could say that male culture dominates here in the first place, but I would argue back that it depends where you are and who you are with. There are places on campus where stereotypical male culture is dominant, and others where femininity is the norm. And don't forget spaces where if you are queer you feel uncomfortable, and places where heterosexuals feel the same. Does the same apply for non-whites? Yep. Moreover, within communities of color, there are tables in Sharples where some people do not feel comfortable sitting.
My point is that there is already incredible diversity at the college, and that equal gender numbers ensures it. The school has issues already that students need to resolve if they want to harmonize their existence with others here. To say that adding more women to the mix would be fruitful in contributing to people's happiness is, in my own opinion, untrue.
— Dan | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#5: 2/17/2009 at 3:06 p.m.
I am of the opinion that we have plenty of men and women but nowhere near enough genderqueer people on this campus.
— Z | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#6: 2/17/2009 at 4:17 p.m.
I think your last paragraph may have a mistake? "Admitting women and men in equal proportions to their applications would result in a significant enough imbalance to cause harm," <-- I thought your point was that we SHOULD admit men and women in equal proportion to their application numbers.
Anyway, I also think that saying that increased sexual tension in Swarthmore men calls for the admission of more women to Swarthmore is kind of silly. Not only does a statement like that objectify women and assume that all men desire a woman (as Clarice noted), you said that there are already more women than men at this school, which means that, statistically speaking, every guy should have his gal and it would be the few women left over who need a date. The whole "sexual tension" thing at Swat, if it even exists (because, of course, the only students who are given a voice are those with a problem), is not a result of there not being enough women here.
— Andrew | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#7: 2/17/2009 at 4:17 p.m.
"And don't forget spaces where if you are queer you feel uncomfortable, and places where heterosexuals feel the same."
Dan, please name the places where heterosexuals feel uncomfortable on campus. I was unaware these places existed.
— Krystyn McIlraith | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#8: 2/17/2009 at 7:56 p.m.
Dear O. Henry,
I'm glad to read all the intelligent criticism of this column. Another thought: when you wrote about the spectre of a "powder-keg of sexually frustrated" young men in the absence a 50-50 gender ratio, it seems to altogether ignore the campus queer community and the obvious fact that not all men are interested in women.
O. Dan
— Dan | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#9: 2/17/2009 at 8:52 p.m.
In terms of demographics we are lacking, I'd say the most egregious absence is of Republicans.
I'd hate to have a campus with students diverse in backgrounds and sexual orientations but whose ideological views were generally constrained to a very narrow band.
Or are we there already?
— bluestater | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#10: 2/17/2009 at 10:16 p.m.
"please name the places where heterosexuals feel uncomfortable on campus. I was unaware these places existed. "
http://daily.swarthmore.edu/2008/12/3/bryn-mawr-prof-queer-sexuality/ perhaps? Not that I'd feel uncomfortable, but it seemed to be a logical example.
— Peter '11 | Registered, Swarthmore
#11: 2/17/2009 at 11:25 p.m.
As a female student I find the claim that "we may be creating a powder-keg of sexually and academically frustrated young men" a little sexist. What about the need to keep women from feeling sexually frustrated? Is our purpose here simply to provide a large pool for men to satisfy their sexual needs? I find the dating experience at Swarthmore sexually frustrating and don't think that admitting more girls will help alleviate that problem.
— Anonymous | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#12: 2/18/2009 at 6:57 a.m.
Bluestater, I'm with you on that. In my experience as a moderately conservative Swarthmorian I would say that we're there already. That said, I would love to see more ideological diversity on campus, I just don't expect to see that happening at any point soon. This is especially true given the occasional vilification of conservatives and conservative viewpoints on campus so those who hold such views tend to keep quiet. Of course, that's just my perspective based on the nearly four years I have spent here. Maybe we'll get better in this post-partisan atmosphere, but I doubt it,
Dave
— Dave | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#13: 2/18/2009 at 11:49 a.m.
Krystyn-
While I certainly agree with you that spaces may be way more difficult to deal with for queer students than straight ones, I think you are assuming that it is easy for straight students to negotiate Swarthmore's social space. Listen, heterosexism, objectification, these harm everybody. They may not harm equally, but they still harm.
You think just because I am a straight man, I always feel comfortable when I go to a Phi Psi party? You think I am not disturbed by what I see there, even as social pressure invites me to participate in it?
Of course the stakes are far less great for me--I can go, I will be safe, nobody will mess with me, I don't have to worry about persecution for my sexual identity. But that doesn't make it a comfortable space.
— Marc Engel | Registered, Swarthmore
#14: 2/18/2009 at 12:20 p.m.
This comment has been deemed inappropriate or irrelevant by the community.
The Gazette does not condone its content. [show anyway]
— baby i'm an anarchist | Unregistered, Non-Swarthmore
#15: 2/18/2009 at 3:23 p.m.
Hey Chris, here's some friendly criticism of this piece. It seems to me that there is some unsound reasoning in your essay. You note that "Affirmative action of this type bears reconsideration – since one weird side effect of all this affirmative action is that fewer equally qualified women are getting in than men." While previously you noted that the percent of men and women at Swarthmore has been fairly consistent at 52% women and 48% men.
Your example of Swat's so-called affirmative action for men is not analogous to that used for racial minorities. First, the problem with minorities is not that they were/are being admitted to higher education in lower numbers than white/Caucasian students per se, but they were/are admitted in lower numbers relative to the percentage they represent in the US population as a whole.
In this case, it is interesting that actually it is the men that are enrolling in colleges across the country in lower percentages than their actual representation in the population. You have brought up the crisis the male population faces in uniform under-performance and under-enrolling in higher ed. relative to women. Actually, then, it seems women as not really the "underrepresented" group as you portray here (though of course we all know that in corporate america and throughout the world they still remain discriminated against). Actually, since women make up 50.8 percent of the US pop., it is men that are underrepresented at Swat in terms of both applications (large discrepancy) and enrollment (*to a lesser degree)
(http://mchb.hrsa.gov/whusa08/popchar/pages/101usp.html)
As a female student, i personally believe it is important to keep a balance on campus in terms of gender for the sake of saneness of the student body and for the sake of keeping in line with not only the us population but also 'nature' (US world population in '05 consisted of roughly 50.3% men 49.7% women
College admission should strive to be reflective of the US population as a whole (i.e. there are smart people from every gender, race, ethnicity,sexual orientation, etc)
This being said, i found your selfish (and may i add illogical!) argument about the need for *more* women on campus (to satisfy the 'sexually frustrated young men!) not empowering for the female cause, but quite sexist and offensive.
— say waht?! | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#16: 2/20/2009 at 7:20 a.m.
in response to "say waht?!":
Ift appears that we have an ideological difference, in that you think admission to college should be based on the demography of the entire US population, while I think that achievement and academic success are more important. So when you have one group consistently outperforming others, they should be rewarded for their industry. When members of that group are handicapped because they as a group are performing too well relative to other groups, I see that as injustice.
If we were to take your position to its logical conclusion, in the name of equal representation, right now we need to not only continue to refuse admission to equally qualified women, we also need to seriously cut down on Asian students. I won't even talk about what it would do to the population of Jewish students at universities, and you would be seeing only about half as many liberal students at Swarthmore, most of them being replaced by evangelical and conservative Christians. We also should, to be fair, admit students who are not as academically oriented or successful, because they represent a large proportion of our country. If we expand to represent the whole world in our admissions policies, American students should only represent 4.5% of the student body.
In a perfect world all groups would perform equally and so would apply and be accepted in number proportional to the country's population, but the world isn't perfect. I suggest that instead of trying to rig the end game to artificially adjust this system, colleges should continue to reward individuals for their academic achievement both in absolute terms and in the context of their environment. While this may mean that demographies which have historically performed poorly in k-12 will not gain admittance, it at least ensures that everyone gets a fair shake when they apply to college, and provides incentive for everyone to perform highly.
— Chris Green | Registered, Swarthmore
#17: 2/22/2009 at 5:36 p.m.
Chris, I generally enjoy your columns and feel you bring up legitimate concerns, the discussion of which is often lacking at Swat. However, almost unfailingly there comes a point in the column where it seems to slip into dangerous/irrelevant territory. For me, in this case, it was the "joke" about prostitution as a solution for men's sexual frustration.
— Amalia Tsiongas | Unregistered, Swarthmore