Month: February 2007

March is high season for college admissions offices. The applications are in and deans are juggling: athletes, quiz show champs, active volunteers, math whizzes, minorities, kids with disabilities, kids who’ve composed symphonies, kids with perfect SAT scores—sometimes all of these things at once—all vying to get into a top school. Apparently, many factors go into crafting a perfectly balanced incoming class.

At UVA, those decisions get made in the admissions office in Peabody Hall. Academe’s vestibule is appointed with creaky wooden floors, oriental rugs, spic-and-span white walls and crown mouldings. A waiting room with a long desk and several busy staff members stretches off the main hallway.

When William G. Bowen, former Princeton president and a higher-education researcher, asserted in 2004 that three categories of students were getting preference in the admissions office—athletes, minorities and legacies, that is, students with family connections to a school—he also pointed out that another group of students was getting passed over. That would be low-income applicants. Bowen urged universities to consider putting a “thumb,” or maybe “a thumb and a half” on the admissions scales, to tip them towards kids who had overcome economic obstacles.

Elite universities heard the call and have since set out to give poorer students more of an edge.

UVA Admissions Dean John A. Blackburn says ambitious fundraising will only help UVA do more for poorer students.

UVA admissions Dean John A. Blackburn describes UVA’s efforts. His office is part workspace, part sitting room—there are books and papers, dark wood furniture and bits of UVA paraphernalia. A squash racquet with an orange Virginia “V” leans in a corner. Seated around a low coffee table, Blackburn talks about a new policy called “need-conscious” admissions.

“We describe ourselves as being need-blind, where we don’t consider the ability to pay as a factor in admission,” he says. “But this new approach, that we’re actively recruiting students from low-income backgrounds…it’s an affirmative decision to give special consideration to students from low-income backgrounds who have taken top courses and thrived at their school.”

Under “need-conscious” admissions, low-income status is, for the first time, “a plus,” Blackburn says.

But college admissions deans across the country also weigh wealth at the other end of the spectrum.

In The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, Wall Street Journal education reporter Daniel Golden maligns the elite university system. He alleges unfair admissions practices admit children of the wealthy and leave little room for low-income candidates.

Golden skewers Duke University for propping up its endowment by bending admissions criteria to admit the academically subpar children of the upper-class. “Duke has enrolled thousands of privileged but under-qualified applicants…in the expectation of parental payback,” Golden writes. “This strategy has helped elevate Duke’s endowment…to 16th in 2005 ($3.8 billion).”

The strategy is not restricted to Duke, Golden claims. “Almost every university takes development admits, and the practice is increasingly prevalent, fueled by larger economic forces,” writes Golden. “Development admits” are students admitted because their parents—and one day, they themselves—will likely make contributions to a school.

Blackburn says that UVA, too, accepts such students. “We’re talking about a tiny number of people. …And [taking development admits is] true of every university. Of course fundraising is important, and for a small number of people, it may have an impact on admissions.”

The number of people admitted because of fundraising ties is about 15-20 students out of 3,100 who enroll per year, Blackburn estimates.

UVA, like other elite schools, also gives considerable preference to “legacies,” or the children of alumni.

The motivation for such admissions policies has always been fundraising. But, lately UVA may find more motivation to rake in the dollars. The Campaign for the University was officially kicked off in September 2006, and UVA has pledged to raise $3 billion by 2011. (With a current endowment of $3.6 billion, or $177,000 per student, UVA is already one of the nation’s wealthiest public schools.)

UVA has long paced itself against private universities like Stanford, Duke and Cornell and even the “Big Three” of the Ivy League: Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The capital campaign “holds the promise of propelling the university into the front ranks of all institutions of higher learning, public or private,” campaign chairman Gordon F. Rainey, Jr. said at the Board of Visitors campaign kickoff last fall.

UVA isn’t the only place where high-dollar campaigns intersect with ambitious financial aid programs for poor students.

“Financial aid, it is expensive to do,” Blackburn says, “so leading universities are getting into it.” UVA’s administration says the Campaign for the University can only help the plight of low-income applicants.

“Every institution has a pot of money and they have to decide how to use it,” Blackburn says. “I think the institutions have to recognize the importance of attracting low-income students. So I don’t see a conflict there. It seems to me it’s only going to get better.”

But a number of researchers have pointed out that though colleges profess equality, they must perform a balancing act.

“Colleges are part church and part car dealer,” writes Peter Sacks, citing Gordon C. Winston, Williams College economics professor and founder of the Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education. “They often talk the talk of Martin Luther King, Jr., but as self-interested institutions focused on their own survival, they more often walk the walk of an investment banker.”

Sacks, a higher education author who reviewed Golden’s book for the Chronicle of Higher Education, writes, “Elite colleges will serve the public good only as long as it does not interfere with their financial survival.”

Such is the conflict that plays out each year in admissions. Acceptance letters for UVA’s new first year class will be mailed April 1.

Look, I feel compelled to make one thing perfectly clear: Despite all evidence to the contrary, the purpose of this column is not to exclusively chronicle the ongoing foibles of Charlottesville’s U.S. Representative Virgil H. Goode (www.house.gov/goode). In fact I would like nothing better than to focus on some of the other odd goings-on ’round these political parts. (Did you know, for instance, that Attorney General Robert McDonnell has ruled that it’s perfectly fine to bring a handgun to a school board meeting? Or that Richmond’s Congressman Eric Cantor, still a bit fuzzy on Article I of the U.S. Constitution, recently told “Hardball”’s Chris Matthews that the decision to declare war on Iran should be left “to the commanders on the ground and those in our military establishment”?) But no, just like those pesky Mafioso in Godfather III, old Virgil just keeps pulling me back in.

Virginia Congressman Virgil Good can’t wrap his mind around the concept of collective monotheism—to name just one thing.

It all started with the recent Senate nondebate on President Bush’s proposed troop increase in Iraq. If you missed it, here’s a brief recap: Virginia Senator John Warner introduced a nonbinding resolution opposing the escalation, helped craft a filibuster-proof compromise resolution with senate Democrats, and then—in a moment of only-in-Washington absurdity—proceeded to vote against a “motion to proceed,” thereby killing his own resolution dead as a doornail.

Although these impressive parliamentary gymnastics probably gave the Republican senator whiplash (and certainly sprained his reputation), they also cleared the way for the House to introduce its own anti-escalation resolution, which (in an act of inspired political chutzpah) was debated for four days straight, with each and every one of the House’s 436 members given five minutes to spout off to their heart’s content.

Well, I’m sure you see where this is going. Never one to shy from the microphone, Representative Goode took the floor with a vengeance on the third day. Now, by that point in the proceedings the “rambling, inflammatory nutjob” bar had been set pretty high. (Most notably by Alaska’s Don Young, who used a made-up Abraham Lincoln quote to declare that members of Congress who voiced dissent “should be arrested, exiled or hanged.”) But Representative Goode was up to the challenge, and proceeded to let his (100 percent American) freak flag fly:

“In no way do I want to aid and assist the Islamic jihadists,” he insisted (dispelling rumors that he’s actually a very clever Al-Qaeda sleeper agent). He then proceeded to rant incoherently about radical Muslims “who want the crescent and star to wave…over the White House,” and who “would love to see ‘In God We Trust’ stricken from our money and replaced with ‘In Muhammad We Trust.’”

Um, Virgil? In case you missed the whole Danish-cartoons-incite-Muslim-rioting thing, trust me when I tell you that the last thing an Islamic-majority government would want on their money is a reference to the prophet Muhammad. Anyway, Muslims don’t worship Muhammad, they worship Allah (which is simply Arabic for “God”). In fact, I don’t want to blow your mind here or anything, but Muslims, Christians and Jews actually all worship the same God, so you might just want to…

Oh, why am I even bothering? Look—just do me a favor and take a nice, month-long vacation, O.K.? That way I can write a completely Virgil-free column for once. And that, I’m sure, would make us both very happy.

Don: To answer your question, Ace went straight to the source: the Code of Virginia (for Ace’s less legally inclined readers, that’s the big book of laws that breaks down what you can and can’t do in the Old Dominion). Unfortunately, Ace got a little distracted once he flipped to the section on traffic violations. Did you know that it’s against the law to coast down a hill in neutral? That there’s a law entitled “Riding animals on highways after sunset?” That you can’t drive more than 13 hours at a time? Which begs the question of enforcement: Would a cop have to follow you for over 13 hours—during which you’re apparently driving in circles, since 13 hours in any direction puts you outside state lines—to make the arrest? Wouldn’t he then be in violation of the law himself? Can police officers arrest themselves? Pressing questions, all of them, but for another day and another column. Luckily, the section on right-of-way came right after section 46-242.1, “Driving over fire hose,” so Ace has some answers for you.

Does the pedestrian always have the right of way? Are there any circumstances when you could get hit by a car while walking and it’s your fault, not the driver’s?—Don Twalk

In Virginia, a driver must yield to pedestrians at “any clearly marked crosswalk” and at “any intersection…where the legal maximum speed does not exceed 35 miles per hour.” So does that mean that if the speed limit is 40 mph and there’s no crosswalk, you can just barrel through an intersection, sending schoolchildren and senior citizens flying like so many fleshy bowling pins? Ace doesn’t recommend it, but if they’re just standing in the middle of the street and you did your best to stop, you’re not going to be held criminally liable for any broken hips or cracked iPod screens. As far as the law’s concerned, the pedestrian has to look both ways, and that’s about it—use of the buddy system is helpful but not legally enforced. That is, if pedestrians “carelessly or maliciously interfere with the orderly passage of vehicles” or “enter or cross an intersection in disregard of approaching traffic,” they’re being negligent. If they get hit, well, too bad.

So, Don, the pedestrian has right of way when it’s reasonable and doesn’t when it’s not. As long as you’re not out on 250 playing chicken, you should be all right.

art The Bridge is the artspace du jour taking a turn as foil to the well-funded and celebrity-approved galleries that occupy prominent Downtown Mall storefronts. And a welcome foil it is; let us rejoice that our art scene has the vital fringe it needs. (One might even call playful, non-commercial art the center, rather than the fringe.) Rather than in-your-face experimentation, the student-curated show at the Bridge displays a confident, lighthearted sense of its own interests.

“Waterfalls Recycling” by Patrick Costello

Those include craft—sewing is big, as in the careful embroidery on a human figure lying supine on a fabric log by Allyson Mellberg and Jeremy Taylor—and a general concern with artmaking as practice. It would be a familiar postmodernist move to put a plastic doll on a log gathered from the woods, then give it a title; the intensive handwork behind this piece elevates it to a far more interesting realm than that. Many of the works in the show have a careful, intricate look that results from repetitive motions of the artists’ hands, whether wielding a needle and thread or a stencil.

Another shared trait of these pieces is a gentle invitation to the viewer to touch, enter or otherwise interact. Victoria Long’s “Dream Fort,” a burlap tent, strongly evokes childhood—not just because it’s like a pillow fort inside, but because of its innocence; it practically giggles. Patrick Costello’s wall sculpture made of sewn felt, paper and plywood isn’t quite representational of its namesake waterfall. But it’s as concerned with physicality—the felt’s fuzzy greens and blues, the grain of the plywood—as a person is when wading in a creek. In other words, the viewer’s mind and body respond. Surprise: There is actual joy in these artworks.