The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Princeton University. They get the award for the following.

Yale freshman Jian Li has filed a federal civil rights complaint against Princeton for rejecting his application for admission, claiming the University discriminated against him because he is Asian.

The complaint, which was filed with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights on Oct. 25, alleges that the University's admissions procedures are biased because they advantage other minority groups, namely African-Americans and Hispanics, legacy applicants and athletes at the expense of Asian-American applicants.

"We've been notified of the complaint and asked to provide information to the Office of Civil Rights, and the University will provide the Office of Civil Rights with the information that it has requested," University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt '96 said yesterday. "But I will say that we do not believe that the case has merit."

The case, first reported this weekend by The Wall Street Journal, injects new life into a longstanding debate surrounding affirmative action and whether race can or should be a factor in college admissions. Li's minority status adds a new twist to the story, however, since previous complaints about universities' racial preference policies have been filed by white students alleging bias.

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Li said in a phone interview yesterday that people have misconstrued his motives for filing the complaint. "I'm fine here," he said of being at Yale. "I'm just doing this because I want to do something about the situation. I want to bring attention to it."

Currently, Li said, colleges discriminate against Asian-Americans on the basis of their ethnicity or race. "I'm not saying that people with the highest SAT scores should be admitted to universities," he said. "Lots of things should be considered beyond that, but I don't think race should be one of them."

Li, who has a perfect 2400 SAT score and near-perfect SAT II scores, was rejected this past year from five of the nine universities he applied to — Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania — and accepted to four: CalTech, Rutgers, Cooper Union and Yale.

Princeton maintains that its admission policies do not discriminate against Asian-American or members of any other race. "We treat each application individually and we do not discriminate on the base of race or national origin," Cliatt said. "To the contrary, we seek to enroll and do enroll classes that are diverse by a multitude of measures."

You get a perfect score on a college admission test and the school rejects your application. What other reason than race can their be for the rejection.

I'm not a fan of lawsuits, but Mr. Li's Civil Rights complaints may finally drag an ugly truth out into public view. That Asian-Americans are discriminated against because they are TOO SMART. The proof is out there, California universities raise the standards for Asian-Americans. If this was done with any other ethnic group or race, the outrage would be overwhelming by both the group and the media. Why is this allowed to happen?

I find it inexcusible. If my two children would have lived, they may have had to face this bullshit. My wife is Asian, I'm white, we should all be treated the same. But for Asian-Americans the standard is raised and they aren't treated the same. Its an outrage that needs to end.

For practicing blatant racial discrimination, Princeton University is today's Knucklehead of the day.

Hat tip- Joanne Jacobs. David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy has a differing opinion.

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