Breaking bloodlines

Mommy and Daddy are no help to Texas A&M hopefuls now. \nAfter much pressure from legislators and social activists, university president Robert M. Gates announced Friday he would end the school's policy of giving admissions boosts to relatives of alumni. Before the announcement, legacy points had been pegged as the deciding factor in admitting at least 300 white students in each of the last few years, according to an analysis by the Houston Chronicle. \nDemocratic presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) also bolsters the attack against legacy policies. Last week he announced to a group of North Carolina students that if elected as president, he would put an end to the practice of giving preference to alumni family members during the college admissions process.\n"Young people should not get into a college or university because their parents and their grandparents and their great-grandparents went there," Edwards said in the Jan. 9 issue of the Wilmington Star. "This is not what we believe in. This is not a system of merit."\nWe support the movement toward establishing systems that prioritize students' accomplishments and not their family name. While legacy points might reflect a grandfather's pride and a chance for donations, they provide no measure of a student's ability to succeed. \nDespite being seemingly unfair to any applicant without the blood connection, legacy admission policies are particularly unjust in the case of first generation college students who should be encouraged in their desire to pursue higher education. Also, as critics point out, many schools with legacy policies practiced discriminatory standards of admission in the past -- meaning most students who benefit from family connections are white. Eliminating what is often dubbed "white affirmative action" would perpetuate the effort to give both minorities and disadvantaged students a fair shot.\nThe fact that a student's family has a history with a particular school necessarily means that the student's family has a history of college. This in itself is a boost that students from struggling families or underdeveloped school districts may not have. The disparity does not need to be reiterated in the admissions process.\nAdmission into one's college of choice should make students feel proud of the hard work and sparkling potential that got them there. Sighing a breath of relief because your mom got you the edge you needed just isn't the same.\nUniversities should strive to admit the people who best fit their standards of academic accomplishment and promise, and quit compromising the quality of their institutions by accepting less-qualified applicants with prestigious names.