party life: are the ivies really so gay?

when only members get ahead, joining the club is what the ambitious do

people keep making huge deals out of these sorts of surveys:

but as our friend inigo montoya tells us:

here’s a provocative question:

“hey, does claiming to be LGBTQ+ make it easier to get into grad school? (especially if you are white or asian?)”

asking for 4,000 undergrads…

perhaps the better headline here is "35% of brown university students will say whatever it takes to get into med school."

or perhaps it’s the only way you get to speak at all. sorry, we do not call on white cishet and if you speak, we’ll jump down your throat and call whatever you say “privilege.”

but add some letters to your “identity” and “voila,” instant right to speak.

you now have a seat at the aggrievement table as oppressed.

the towering irony of the fact that this right is rooted in having become an oppressor yourself by joining into the tyranny of the other side rather than taking a beating standing up against it seems lost on everyone.

it’s easy to malign and call them craven and gutless, and obviously, there is a point there.

but there’s another side to the story as well and we’ve seen how poorly folks stand up to structural attacks arrayed against them and how fruitless it is on an individual level. you just get excluded and steamrollered. asking an 18 year old to take a moral stance upon which they will sacrifice their past achievements and future ambitions puts them in a pretty untenable position, especially if others will readily “go along to get along.”

once the attack is broad enough and powerful enough, societies submit and get with the program.

it’s the lesson of the 2020’s.

being smart is no proof against this and being ambitious may make the pressures worse.

“who needs a job or is trying to get into school?” see any cross correlation in affiliation?

many of these kids are high achievers, smart, successful, driven. they are the kids that were always at ivies. they put in staggering amounts of work to get there. they want to learn and thrive and move on to the next level.

but they are told they can’t because they are white or asian.

but hey, just “say gay” or better still say “bi” or pick some complex orientation that takes 8 minutes to explain and that only 4 people actually understand and off you go. no one will dare check.

it’s safety and promotion through tactical affiliation and allegiance.

once, your scores, grades, activities, and sports might have gotten you in, but nope, not today, you’re chinese. sorry, your standards are different. and these kids are motivated and calculating. mostly, they have to be. absent some edge, getting into ivies now is beastly hard. so some will adopt a pose to get in.

and if those are the ones who do get in, guess what sort of class you get?

yup.

liars.

you’re selecting for it.

you’re forcing them into it.

i went to these schools. many of my friends have kids there now. these kids all “get the joke.” you say what you have to to get in, get privileges, and move on to corporate jobs and grad school just like you hired a consultant to pick your extra curriculars back when you were 13 and to help you write your admission essay. everyone has a story about how “the dumbest kid in my class got in by writing an essay about “going trans.”” people learn. they adapt tactics.

the admissions war is hell.

it’s savage, dog eat dog stuff.

you need a way to buck this trend.

you need a way to buck this trend.

an 80th percentile MCAT asian with a 3.7 GPA has about the same admission rate as a 43rd percentile MCAT black applicant with a 3.2.

tiger moms and tiger kids are gonna find a way.

and, elizabeth “fauxcahantas” warren notwithstanding, you cannot change your race.

so what’s your play?

what would you, as a high achiever, do if you found yourself shut out of opportunity?

would you give up or learn to game the system?

totalitarian regimes always select for this.

if you wanted to get ahead in the USSR, you joined "the party.”

most who were “nazis” in germany in the 30’s and 40’s were not really that into nazism. they just needed to join to get jobs and go to school and to be left alone.

ask china about “being maoist” or “communist party membership” even today.

they all do this.

all allegiance to chairman meow or kiss law school goodbye!

a big bad bully takes over and dominates a system and (unless you’re in the in group or actually agree) you can either get shut out or make pretense of playing along.

i would LOVE to see how many of these allegedly alphabet sexuality kids have ever actually had a same sex or other such sexual partner. i would wager it winnows this list by 80%, probably more among males.

it’s a weird codependency.

the colorful flag folks get to claim “we are legion!”

the “joiners” get to game the system.

everyone is lying, most probably know it, but the lie benefits everyone involved.

but it also taints them, it selects for the dishonest, the toady, the viper.

is this really the system into which we wish to immerse our best and brightest?

one that’s all awful hobson’s choices?

apart from the few who actually believe it, it predicates success upon falsity.

it’s truly a terrible sorting hat for future leaders.

not exactly “gryffindor” is it?

yet another reason it’s time for DEI to go the way of the dodo.

this stuff is societal polonium.

there is no safe dosage.

try the DEI blend, mr litvinenko…