No Carlo, I do not care about the feelings of "Highly Rejectives" and if that makes me a bully so be it

In response to a series of tweets from Carlo (seen here)

Carlo (campus logic): Fascinating to watch the passive/aggressive push to try and bully & shame higher education institutions' admissions by swapping in "rejective" for "selective." Fun fact: rejective also doesn't show up on a single site in a web search of synonyms for the word selective.

Carlo (campus logic): I'd argue that highly selective institutions care about who get in whereas highly rejective institutions would care about who does not get in. That's different and not necessarily reflective of the process that enrollment management goes through.

Carlo (campus logic) : College buy names to increase their rejection numbers or they buy names to increase the likelihood of building better enrollment cohorts? They look the same on paper.

I have copies of letters from 1/2 generations ago citing segregation/negro status as a reason for rejection from Highly Rejectives.  My great aunt and her husband, MY MOTHER, could not even attend these schools.  Do you know how many letters I have from my great uncle that said “no” and cited him being “negro?”  I can’t even remember how many of them we have- it is a lot

 YET, right now, at this moment a portion of the class at MOST highly rejective schools is SAVED for the descendants of people admitted during segregation.  And these colleges to “create better enrollment cohorts” STILL buy Black and Brown names to ensure their admissions pool is diverse and WILL INEVITABLY reject many of those Black and Brown students WHILE admitting a legacy who has less qualifications, a rich student whose family can donate who has less qualifications, a politician’s student who can give a college more power who has less qualifications, a celebrity student/celebrity who has less qualifications, a student who comes from a school the institution needs to maintain a good relationship with who has less qualifications, a student they defer to fly them under the radar because they are less qualified but rich/connected, a student who is given a walk-on they did not earn on some sports team at a highly rejective because they less qualified but rich/connected 

OR these colleges will cherry pick the “good ones” while rejecting the rest of the bought names (who were again probably more qualified than the students with connections/wealth) then use these students for diversity flyers or photo ops while the student experiences feelings of alienation because are at a college more shaped by privilege and wealth than qualifications.  The students consistently and predictably report racist experiences AND will inevitably hear what I heard after working my butt off to get into law school- that they only got in “because you’re Black.”  I have students RIGHT NOW who have not stepped on campus of these highly rejectives but have already heard their acceptance was not earned but handed over to them because they are Black.   

So let’s recap- these colleges will reject the majority of students whose name they bought from College Board, that they entice to apply after buying their name, while accepting LESS qualified rich/connected students, AND cherry-pick the “good ones” so they can continue the illusion of a commitment to diversity and those students will spend 4 years at a rejective college shaped more by privilege, wealth, classism, commitment to systemic racist structures than merit but that’s all good because “better enrollment cohorts” are formed- and by better you mean mostly privileged, men, and their descendants…  that is not a problem for you

 The problem is HOW DARE I and others tell them the truth by calling them “highly rejective” and if I do I am bullying them… I am supposed to consider the feelings of institutions who told my ACTUAL family not to attend because “you’re a negro” and that was one of the NICER letter and “Negro” was the nicer term Carlo

And you want to use your platform to advocate for these colleges and tell Black people who invent new terms like “highly rejective” that THEY are bullies because you believe these colleges have a RIGHT to get students hopes up and reject them after they bought their name and enticed them to apply because you believe it is justified that they did this for a “better enrollment cohort” WHILE ignoring evidence of all the inequitable policies (legacy, donor list, etc) they have in place that predictably result in less qualified candidates getting a spot over MORE qualified candidates… that is a “BETTER enrollment cohort” in your mind and you want to pretend highly selectives are just picky and more committed to merit AS THEY DO THIS and how dare WE tell you otherwise and if we do we are the bullies… 

That is what you want to put the cape on for?  Okay Carlo… okay