THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. ** Monday, February 24, 2020 |A
“The biggest risk is that
we’re high and we still haven’t
gotten all of the spring rains
and the snowmelt,” said Joey
Windham, watershed division
chief with the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers Mississippi Valley
Division.
Like Jackson, many river-
side communities are already
on alert. “Getting on a fan boat
and riding down neighborhood
streets that you’ve been on in
the past and know a car nor-
mally travels, that is sobering,”said Jackson Mayor Chokwe
Antar Lumumba. “We’ve got a
lot of water these days. Some-
thing’s changing,” he said.
In Alton, Ill., which sits on
the banks of the upper Missis-
sippi, about 15 miles south of
where it converges with the Il-
linois River, flooding caused
$5 million to $6 million in
damage last year. Repairs are
ongoing even as officials
worry about spring rains and
the snowpack to the north
that will add to the city’s floodU.S. NEWS
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, a Watergate-era law that
Mr. Trump believes was improp-
erly used to target his cam-
paign, these people said.
Overhauling FISA has be-
come a rallying cry for conser-
vatives and allies of the presi-
dent in the aftermath of a
watchdog report detailing sev-
eral errors made by the Fed-
eral Bureau of Investigation in
its applications for surveil-
lance of Trump campaign ad-
viser Carter Page. Some Re-
publicans have called for
upending FISA, prompting
pushback from some in the ad-
ministration, including Attor-
ney General William Barr.
The plan, which is being
spearheaded by officials within
the White House Domestic Pol-
icy Council, is in the early
stages and could face resis-
tance from other parts of theTrump administration, includ-
ing the National Security
Council, which has generally
advocated maintaining or ex-
panding surveillance powers
during Mr. Trump’s presidency.
FISA governs how the FBI,
the National Security Agency
and other agencies conduct
national security-related spy-
ing on domestic targets. The
administration has said it sup-
ports a permanent renewal of
the parts of the law due to
lapse, including a currently
halted NSA program that col-
lects U.S. call data, which a
growing number of Republi-
cans and Democrats want to
allow to expire.
The lapsing provisions,
which were first adopted un-
der the post-9/11 Patriot Act
and last amended in 2015,
aren’t the same as the ones
the White House officials areeager to revise. But because
Congress rarely considers
changes to intelligence law,
those officials want to capital-
ize on the deadline.
The administration officials
are discussing possible revi-
sions and are planning deeper
discussions with lawmakers,
but they said the overall goal
was to increase transparency.
One proposal would estab-
lish a process by which sub-
jects of national-security sur-
veillance would be later
notified they had been sur-
veilled. Such a change, long
pushed by some privacy
groups, would align the law
more closely with disclosure
requirements for criminal
wiretaps, which typically con-
clude with targets being noti-
fied, the people said.
Mr. Trump has been a harsh
critic of the government’s sur-veillance powers and has pri-
vately encouraged his advisers
to develop a policy response to
the surveillance of Mr. Page,
the people familiar with the
matter said. Mr. Trump feels
victimized by the FISA process
and the intelligence agencies
that he oversees.
“We were abused by the
FISA process; there’s no ques-
tion about it,” Mr. Trump told
reporters this month.
Many of the claims by Mr.
Trump about Obama-era sur-
veillance against him and his
campaign lack merit and in
some cases have been disputed
by his own Justice Department,
but he has said the watchdog
report vindicates his criticism.
In late 2016, the FBI began
to conduct surveillance on Mr.
Page, who had drawn the in-
terest of counterintelligence
investigators for his contactwith a suspected Russian spy
in New York. The surveillance
was approved by the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance
Court, the secret judicial panel
that approves such warrants.
The Justice Department’s
inspector general concluded in
December that the FBI had
made significant errors in how
it sought and obtained the
surveillance.
Among the “serious perfor-
mance failures” documented
was the FBI’s withholding to
the FISA court of information
that undercut claims made by
a former British intelligence
officer, Christopher Steele, in
an unverified dossier the bu-
reau partially relied on to ob-
tain approval for surveillance
against Mr. Page.
—Sadie Gurman
and Alex Leary
contributed to this article.WASHINGTON—Senior
White House officials are dis-
cussing an overhaul of the
government’s surveillance pro-
gram for people in the U.S.
suspected of posing a na-
tional-security risk, spurred in
part by President Trump’s
grievances about an investiga-
tion of a 2016 campaign ad-
viser, according to people fa-
miliar with the matter.
The effort seeks to take ad-
vantage of the looming expira-
tion of some spying powers next
month, including portions of the
BYANDREWRESTUCCIA
ANDDUSTINVOLZ
Surveillance Program Gets a Hard Look
Some in White House
want to overhaul FISA
after Trump questioned
probe of his campaign
Harvard in a court case. A leg-
acy had a 33.9% chance of be-
ing admitted to Harvard com-
pared with 5.9% for nonlegacy
students, according to evi-
dence in the trial.
Harvard said it had no plans
to change its current legacy
policy.
In 2019, about 48% of col-
leges and universities consid-
ered legacy in their freshmen-
admission decisions, down
from 58% in 2004, according to
Peterson’s College Guide, which
helps run a survey called the
common data set. Legacy pref-
erence remains more widely
used at top-tier universities
than at less selective schools.
Legacy gives the children of
graduates the equivalent of a
160-point bump on the SAT
over nonlegacy students, ac-
cording to a study by Prince-
ton University sociologist
Thomas Espenshade.
Schools have defended leg-
acy preference as necessary to
encourage alumni donations
and keep them involved in the
school community. In 2019, col-
leges and universities raised
more than $11 billion from
alumni, almost a quarter of
their total fundraising, accord-
ing to the Council for Advance-
ment and Support of Education.
Former George Washington
University President Stephen
Joel Trachtenberg, a longtime
champion of legacy prefer-
ence, said taking away the
preference would remove le-
verage in fundraising conver-
sations. If “you can’t promise
them even extra consideration,
a second look or something
like that, you’re out there
pretty much selling nothing,”
he said. But Mr. Trachtenberg
said he has “been worn down
by the arguments on the other
side and moved a little to the
left on this. It’s probably a
battle not worth fighting.”
Student efforts to abolish
legacy preference have cropped
up at about a dozen schools,
including Brown University and
Duke University. So far, those
efforts have been unsuccessful.
Princeton, where 14% of the
class of 2023 are children of
alumni, defends legacy prefer-
ence as a way to continue to
integrate the school. About
half of the student body is
now nonwhite. Legacies at
Princeton are admitted at
about four times the general
rate. Among legacies admitted
last year, 27% were students of
color. “We are working hard to
diversify our student body, in
every sense of the word (so-
cioeconomic, geographic, life
experience),” Princeton
spokesman Ben Chang wrote
in an email. “At the same time,
we believe multigenerational
relationships are important to
this institution and commu-
nity. And as our student body
diversifies, our alumni body
diversifies, and, in turn, the
children of alumni diversify.”
Some schools are giving
contradictory messages on the
subject. Websites for several
schools state that they con-
sider legacy during admis-
sions, but the schools all said
the information online was
wrong or misleading.
Richard Kahlenberg, a long-
time critic of legacy prefer-
ences and senior fellow at left-
leaning Century Foundation,
said schools weren’t being
forthright. “Their hands are
caught in the cookie jar and in
a post Varsity Blues world
they are trying to deny it,” he
said.Some elite universities are
walking back the practice of
giving the children of alumni
preferential treatment in ad-
missions, in some cases react-
ing to the public distrust of
college admissions that was
laid bare last year in the na-
tionwide cheating scandal.
The practice, called legacy
preference, is out-of-step with
many schools’ stated goal of at-
tracting a more diverse student
body, admissions officers say.
The custom, which dates
back to the 1920s and dispro-
portionately benefits wealthy,
white families, has drawn in-
creasing criticism in recent
years. Some schools have done
away with the practice.
Now, following the cheating
scandal, more schools are re-
visiting the issue.
Johns Hopkins University in
January said it had phased out
legacy preference over several
years. Indiana University is
considering dropping legacy to
create more equitable access,
a school spokesman said.
While Ivy League institu-
tions all continue to consider
legacy preference, schools in-
cluding the University of Flor-
ida and Purdue University say
they collect legacy information
but that it carries less weight
than it once did—or none at all.
Legacy preference has been
entrenched for so long and
given applicants such a big leg
up that any movement away
from it carries the possibility of
alienating alumni, admissions
officers say.
The result is a political hot
potato with which many
schools aren’t eager to reckon.
College admissions has “be-
come the whipping boy of the
American public and anything
attached to it that is negative
becomes even more negative,
and I think legacy is just one
of those elements,” said Kris-
tina Wong Davis, vice provost
for enrollment management at
Purdue, referring to the admis-
sions scandal that broke last
year known as “Varsity Blues.”
Purdue, a public university
in West Lafayette, Ind., says
on its website that it considers
legacy, but Ms. Davis said it
doesn’t.
At 30 highly selective col-
leges, primary legacies—mean-
ing one of the applicant’s par-
ents attended the school—were
more than three times as likely
to gain admission as nonlega-
cies, according to a 2011 study
published in the Economics of
Education Review. At Harvard
University, they are more than
five times more likely, accord-
ing to statistics disclosed by
BYDOUGLASBELKIN
Colleges Rethink
Legacy Preference
risk as it melts and hits the re-
gion’s rivers.
“The ground is already sat-
urated,” said Bob Barnhart, Al-
ton’s public-works director.
In Vidalia, La., Mayor Buz
Craft said his community on
theedgeofthelowerMissis-
sippi also is still recovering
from the 2019 flood season.
He is anticipating it will take
up to $700,000 to repair dam-
age to the sewer system and a
few million dollars to improve
the system. “We’re seeing an
unusually high river year after
year after year,” he said.
In Jackson, floodwaters
from the Pearl River continued
to recede but the waterway
was about 2 feet above flood
stage early Sunday evening. Of-
ficials said they would begin
assessing the damage on Mon-
day.
Residents displaced from
flooded neighborhoods began
returning home midweek to
assess the damage. On Juli-
enne Street, near Nichols Ave-
nue, the rain fell lightly as
Ruby Bingham walked up her
front steps to find the flood-
waters that left small silver
fish dotting the roadway
hadn’t breached her home.
“We went through the ’
flood and it took the whole
house under,” Ms. Bingham,
69, said, referring to the re-
cord flood about 40 years ago
that crested at over 43 feet.
“We’re blessed it didn’t get in
the house this time.”JACKSON, Miss.—Nyana
Griffis used a cellphone flash-
light to pick her way through
her brick home last week, after
flooding from the still-swollen
Pearl River left brown silt
coating the ceramic white tiles
in the entryway and soaked
into the living-room carpet.
“At the moment, I’m kind of
just like numb,” the 38-year-
old mother of four said as she
gathered some schoolbooks
and other belongings left be-
hind when her family evacu-
ated their cul-de-sac on the
river’s banks. “I don’t really
know how to process it.”
Hundreds of businesses and
homes were damaged as heavy
rains inundated Mississippi’s
capital city over Presidents Day
weekend, pushing the Pearl
River to its third-highest crest
even as officials used the Bar-
nett Reservoir to help hold wa-
ter and mitigate the flooding.
The city is among the na-
tion’s many riverside commu-
nities where residents and of-
ficials are worriedly watching
the weather forecast after an
unusually early start to the
2020 spring flood season fol-
lowing a soggy 2019. Federal
data show last year was the
second-wettest on record
across the continental U.S.
A changing climate is af-
fecting precipitation. Suzanne
Van Cooten, hydrologist in
charge of the National
Weather Service’s Lower Mis-
sissippi River Forecast Center,
said the frequency of intense
rains has been on the rise.
“If these heavier rainfall
events, you know, increase in
frequency, our rivers and
streams are going to be re-
sponding in line too,” she said.
“That trend has been docu-
mented.”
Nearly 23 inches of rain al-
ready has fallen on Jackson
since Jan. 1, more than 14
inches above what is normal
for this time of year, said John
Moore, a meteorologist for the
National Weather Service in
Jackson. Long-range forecasts
show 76 river-gauge loca-
tions—including along the up-
per Mississippi and Red rivers
to the north, and the Pearl
River to the south—with a
greater than 50% chance of
major flood risk from Febru-
ary through April.BYERINAILWORTHFloods Leave River Towns Shaken
Flooding in Jackson, Miss., which has seen nearly 23 inches of rain this year, well above average, according to the National Weather Service.RORY DOYLE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (2)AllschoolsTop 250Fewerschoolsofferlegacy
applicantsanedgeduring
theadmissionsprocess
amidconcernsoverthe
practice'sfairness.
Percentage of colleges and
universities considering
legacy during admissions
Source: Petersons.com
Note: No data provided for 2005-
65
40
45
50
55
60
%2005 ’10 ’AroundthelowerMississippiRiver,severallocationsin
reachedarecordnumberofdayswherewaterlevelswereabove
thefloodstageforthatyear.050100150200250 daysRecordsetin2019 Recordsetin1927*2019levelSource: NOAA*Year of the Great Mississippi FloodCairo, Ill.Memphis,Tenn.ArkansasCity, Ark.
Greenville,Miss.Vicksburg,Miss.Natchez,Miss.Red River La nding,La.Ba
ton Rouge, La.Chairs were removed from Morning Star M.B. Church in Floweree, Miss., as floodwaters closed in.