May 25, 2012

Claremont McKenna Hoaxes: SAT and Hate

From Charles C. Johnson in City Journal on what we know now about the mostly hushed-up scandal at one of the Claremont Colleges, where the Admissions department fabricated statistics submitted to USNW&R and other guidebooks to keep its Top Ten liberal arts college rating:
From the start, [Claremont McKenna College or CMC] officials played down the scope of Vos’s fabrications. College president Pamela Gann said that [admissions boss Richard] Vos had manipulated only the school’s average SAT scores, and then not by much. But a day after Gann made that claim, the Claremont Port Side, a left-wing student publication, revealed a wider system of manipulation by the admissions office; in some years, some individual SAT scores were simply made up. A report released last month by O’Melveny & Myers, the college’s outside counsel, shows still more deception. Evidently, Vos didn’t merely fake SAT scores; he faked ACT scores, the percentage of students admitted from the top 10 percent of their high school classes, and the college’s overall acceptance rate. Everywhere the investigators from O’Melveny & Myers looked, they uncovered evidence of fraud and manipulation. So after just 18 hours of interviews, they stopped looking. 
It’s probably no coincidence that Vos’s manipulations began soon after the college received a $700,000 grant to expand racial preferences in its admissions. In March 2002, the admissions office changed its policies in accord with a “Campus Diversity Initiative” grant that it received from the James Irvine Foundation. The grant’s conditions called for a 2 percent yearly increase in nonwhite enrollment for three years. CMC also promised to deliver a student body that would be 37 percent nonwhite at the end of the grant’s term. The college went to great lengths to achieve these quotas, preparing “minority brochures” and flying in nonwhite students from around the country to visit. These efforts reached their apex at the same time that the college boosted its minority-outreach efforts through two new programs, QuestBridge and Posse, which continue to grant full scholarships to low-income—mostly black and Hispanic—students at top colleges across the nation. 
Vos was an enthusiastic supporter of racial preferences and a vocal critic of California’s Proposition 209, which in 1996 banned state colleges from admitting students on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex. During his tenure, CMC’s admissions policies led to higher acceptance rates for blacks and Latinos and lower ones for whites and Asians. According to the Claremont Independent in 2006, “statistics provided by the admissions office show that it admitted roughly 45 percent of both black and Hispanic applicants, [versus] 22 percent of the white applicants and 17 percent of Asian applicants.” Given this history, it’s probable that Vos’s preferential policies resulted in lower average SAT scores than he would have liked and led him to make his disastrous fabrications. 

Here's my 2004 American Conservative article "Claremont Hate Hoax."

19 comments:

  1. You know what would be interesting? If Harvard, Princeton or Stanford simply said "any African American who can score a 1500 on the SATs gets in automatically, and gets a free ride." Let's see how many African Americans can meet that challenge. I'm sure an industry would develop to coach the smarter African American kids. It still wouldn't change the numbers much.

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  2. This related article at NYT seems like Sailer bait:

    At CUNY, Stricter Admissions Bring Ethnic Shift

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/nyregion/at-cunys-top-colleges-black-and-hispanic-freshmen-enrollments-drop.html

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  3. I find it unamusing that the FBI is always called in on these fake "hate crimes," the perpetrators always lie to them (at first, anyway) and no matter how much trouble is stirred up, the FBI and US Attorney just go away after the hoax is discovered. The perpetrators are never prosecuted, even though the Martha Stewart case alerted everyone in America that even immaterial lies to a FBI agent (much less false criminal complaints) are Federal felonies which bring hard time even for first offenders who have done no actual harm.

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  4. Didja notice that CMC got to keep its USN&WR top-ten rank even though it faked its stats? Talk about liberal solidarity-- it seems admitting unqualified NAM's is such a mitzvah that it excuses peccadillos like lying about test scores in order to cheat other applicants of the college experience surrounded by other high-quality students that those applicants seek.

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  5. Hate Hoaxes are getting wilder than the Protocols of Elders of Zion.
    It's like the new Crucible where Jews, gays, and colored folks see white devil everywhere.

    But it be true. Last night, a bunch of whiteys burned a cross on my lawn, raped my mulatto wife, spray-painted 'N-s must die' and swastikas on my garage door, and shot my dog cuz it be black.

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  6. I remember seeing this months ago & being disappointed the Claremont dean wasn't comedian Rich Vos

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  7. If Harvard, Princeton or Stanford simply said "any African American who can score a 1500 on the SATs gets in automatically, and gets a free ride."

    What would be the purpose? H & P already give a free ride below a given IRS threshold and they don't have to specify the race.

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  8. Peter: Harvard's black quota is roughly the size of the total number scoring over 1400, back in 2 part days.

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  9. Crawfurdmuir5/26/12, 8:11 AM

    How many supposed "hate crimes" actually are hoaxes? Let's see - we have this one, Sharpton's Tawana Brawley hoax, the Duke lacrosse team rape hoax, the Jena 6 hoax, and the Trayvon Martin case in which it's already been shown that the national new media deliberately altered or suppressed information. There must be many other such instances.

    Indeed, there's something basically fraudulent about the entire concept of "hate crime." Any crime of violence against person or property is still a crime whatever may be the racial or ethnic antipathies of its perpetrator. The objective of agitation to outlaw "hate crimes" is to extend the definition of crime to encompass the mere adherence to, or expression of, politically incorrect sentiments. It is, in other words, designed to proscribe heresies against the reigning secular orthodoxy. The baleful potential of such a new type of inquisition has already been demonstrated in several European countries, Britain, and Canada.

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  10. Veracitor:

    More likely, it's because:

    a. They're in the club, so they will get a pass where outsiders would not.

    b. The rankings are gamed extensively by everyone, and so zero tolerance for dishonesty would serve most or all top schools very badly.

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  11. H, P and Stanford. What's Yale, chopped liver?

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  12. >shot my dog cuz it be black<

    The latest SWPL fad is to decry disparate adoption rates of black dogs (canis lupus familiaris) from pounds and encourage increased adoption of them. I kid you not.

    For now, the shaggy victims are called simply "black dogs" and include all manner of darks. But surely a more sensitive term will be invented eventually.

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  13. H, P and Stanford. What's Yale, chopped liver?

    Yeah, it's HYPS, although Stanford has jumped Princeton.

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  14. Which suggests that Princeton might want to consider starting law and business schools.

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  15. The CMC hoax took place in March 2004, not 2002.

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  16. The Jena 6 & Trayvon Martin cases aren't fabrications like the other incidents mentioned. A real event happened which was construed differently by some people and also happened to gain massive media attention.

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  17. There's another lez hate hoax in the news this time Colorado triggered by a classic neighborhood don't let your dog poop on my lawn argument. The perps in these cases are just nasty sociopaths who don't give a damn. A crafty old dyke played the hoax card! But then the cops got wise to the witch!

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  18. Night Rally link - I was hoping it was EC's. Nice touch.

    -meh

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  19. Had to yawn and say WHO CARES? The OBSESSION with college stats is completely pointless beyond a certain level. I blew a lot of dough on college and grad school and I can't tell you what the average SAT score or class rank was. Heck I'm not too sure where my original diploma is and graduation wasn't that long ago.

    Anyway there is no way I would want to go to a university that does not consider race, gender, tax bracket, and sexual orientation in admissions. If a place such as that exists 90% of the people there are asian women. Yes my friend they now have affirmative action for WHITE MALES and I'm glad they do.

    http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/02/towson

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