excalibur
Diamond Member
- Mar 19, 2015
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Have we hit bottom yet with this shit? Or is there further to fall?
Cancer’s good as cured, and Mars good as conquered. The press was abuzz last week with news that 17-year-old Floridian Ashley Adirika, a child of Nigerian immigrants, was accepted for admission by all eight Ivy League universities.
Anyone perusing the many glowing profiles of Ms. Adirika looking for information about GPAs, SATs, or ACTs would’ve been sorely disappointed, because Ashley was chosen not for her grades but for her many accomplishments, which include being a student of color, being born a person of color and then becoming a student, possessing color while being a student, and being physically present in a learning institution for students as a student while encased in skin of color.
In high school, Adirika founded a group called Our Story Our Worth (“a community organization that empowers young female students of color”). She also served on her school’s debate team and as student body president. Other accomplishments include being a student, and being of color.
And the debate team. There was that, too.
Adirika has chosen Harvard as her destination. Regarding her major, she told CNN that her ultimate goal is “to fix issues in communities with the knowledge of government systems and policies” via “explorations in policy and social policy and things of that nature,” adding, “I am really passionate about policy and using policy to empower communities. I want to use that as a platform to do work in policy.”
Meanwhile, across town, an Asian-American teen with a 4.0 GPA, perfect SAT scores, and an internship at a nuclear power plant where he single-handedly innovated a new reactor design was handed his rejection slip from every U.S. college:
“Dear Quan, your application essay didn’t use the word ‘policy’ nearly enough. In the future, please keep your goals vague, and try to say ‘policy’ multiple times per sentence. Also, be more of color, but not your color; the other, better color. Best of luck to you in your uncle’s restaurant; with the dumplings, go easy on the vinegar.”
The Week That Perished
www.takimag.com
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