American Political Issues # 1 - Affirmative Action and College Acceptance Policies: Reflections on national debate in personal terms

For college freshmen, the college application process is too fresh in their minds to really ever discuss.  However, the further students advance in college, the more willing they are to objectively think about the application process.  Admittedly, many white suburban-born college students feel resentment and harbor ignorance towards many students of color who they view to have been graced with easier admission than them.  Despite the opinion of said population, affirmative action is a hot topic.  The debate oftentimes lands on the side of affirmative action, recognizing that it really is a minimal effort to give advantage to a demographic which, traditionally and presently, is not blessed with as many advantages and is stunted by many disadvantages which the majority of the white population in this country does not face.  Thus, college admissions processes are a controversial and heated topic which many parents, students, educators, and citizens hold strong convictions about.

 Although all colleges and universities experience conflicted images and application decision strategies, Boston College is one with a special reputation.  One of the less well-known arguments for affirmative action is that many white students’ parents did go to college and thus have the advantage of being the child of an alumnus at select universities.  Private universities and colleges throughout the country rely on their alumni as their major donor population.  Therefore, when the children of the universities major source of income, (excluding tuition), apply to also come to the given university; it makes sense for the economic stability and advancement of the university, to accept these ‘legacies.’  What many individuals do not recognize is that this for of favoritism is much more tangible, and has a much larger impact than affirmative action does on who is accepted and rejected from a given university – like Boston College.

The social psychological perspective on this issue might say that favoritism of the children of alumni is not only beneficial to the health of the university, but perfectly natural.  The concept in question here is kinship selection.  Kinship selection is the natural pattern by which people are more likely to ‘give a leg up’ to those who are most similar to themselves.  It is natural to, when you see yourself in an applicant, to want to help this younger version of you, because 1) you were probably helped at some point, and we feel obligated to return favors, and 2) because we are egotistical creatures who would like to work with or teach or be around those most similar to ourselves, simply because we think we are great, and so those who remind us of ourselves must be great as well.  Furthermore, we are most likely to help those most closely related to ourselves – this established pattern is based in survival of the fittest.  It is most beneficial to us to save those who share our DNA, because then, we are – in the form of DNA – passed on.  Whether modern kinship selection, in the form of favoritism in college admissions, is moral or fair or even a good policy is negotiable, however, what is not negotiable is that this appears to be a reflection of our evolutionary history in a modern context.