Los Angeles Times - 07.08.2019

LATIMES.COM/OPINION WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2019A

OP-ED

B

y now, we’re allfamiliar
with the college admis-
sions scandal investi-
gated in Operation Var-
sity Blues by federal pros-
ecutors. Over the course of the last
several months, the investigators
have exposed the actions of
wealthy families across the world
who paid large sums of money to
get their children into selective
American colleges fraudulently.
The conspiracy received global at-
tention — particularly because of
the celebrities involved — and
prompted widespread disdain.
Now, as some internal campus in-
vestigations come to a close and
guilty pleas pile up, it’s easy to
think that the legal process has ad-
dressed the problem.
Wrong.
As student body presidents at
four universities immersed in the
scandal — USC, UCLA, Stanford
and Yale — we know that this illegal
scheme is only one example of the
many ways in which money influ-
ences the admissions process.
Across the United States, many
high school students from high-in-
come families have the resources

to attend elite private schools, take

personalized SAT/ACT prep

courses, go on resume-boosting

travel programs, embark on cross-

country college tours to “demon-

strate interest,” and employ pro-

fessional college counselors to

strengthen their application mate-

rials. Students from lower-income

backgrounds often have no oppor-

tunity to engage in any of these ac-

tivities.

Even one of the main mecha-

nisms through which our public

schools are funded — property

taxes from their local neighbor-

hoods — disadvantages students

from low-income areas. High

school students at underfunded

public schools do not receive the

same access to high-quality college

prep resources as do their peers at

public and private schools in

wealthier ZIP Codes — resources

that are necessary to navigate the

increasingly daunting landscape of

college admissions.

As students at selective uni-

versities, we acknowledge the

many ways in which we have per-

sonally benefited from this system

of privilege. Many of us come from

well-resourced parts of the country

and were surrounded by people fa-

miliar with the college admissions

process. We would not be where we

are today without certain opportu-

nities provided to us that other stu-

dents could not afford, and we

want to make sure that this signifi-

cant injustice is not lost in the sen-

sational headlines about Opera-

tion Varsity Blues.

The real scandal is about the

millions of kids who will never have

an equitable chance in an ex-

tremely complex, competitive and

costly process.

The college admissions scandal

is not confined to a handful of privi-

leged families and institutions. It is

embedded in the fabric of the U.S.

education system. In a 2017 article,

“The Aristocracy That Let Me In,”

Andrew Granato, a Stanford stu-

dent, reflected on the ways in

which the U.S. has developed a

modern-day aristocracy based on

the myth of a meritocratic educa-

tion system. Instead of passing

down social status through inher-

ited titles or landholdings, today’s

elites are able to provide their chil-

dren with special resources to pre-

pare them for admission into selec-

tive universities, thereby ensuring

that they too will enter into Ameri-

ca’s top economic tier.

Still, much can be done within

the existing system to mitigate the

inequities that result from this so-

cial hierarchy. The University of

Chicago and a number of other col-

leges have eliminated SAT/ACT re-

quirements on their applications, a

movement that we urge our own

universities to join. Similar calls

have been made to reevaluate lega-

cy admissions, a process that gives

an unfair advantage to educated

and often wealthier families. In ad-

dition, America’s most selective

universities need to engage in more

targeted outreach to lower- and

middle-income students who are

severely underrepresented on

their campuses.

Making our education system a

true meritocracy will also require

fundamental political and cultural

changes outside of individual uni-

versities. The way we finance pub-

lic school districts has to change —

using property taxes only serves to

reinforce geographic, racial and so-

cioeconomic disparities in educa-

tion quality. These disparities af-

fect students’ chances of success

before they reach middle school,

much less college.

Our school systems need to ad-

dress the biased structures and

practices that exist in their class-

rooms, like disciplinary practices

that target students of color. And

any conversation about school

choice needs to take into account

whether a particular program

combats or intensifies socioec-

onomic stratification.

Exposing the people involved in

the admissions scandal has given

the public a sense of how readily

the system can be manipulated by

wealth. But the reality is that jus-

tice won’t be served simply by hold-

ing some headline-making families

accountable. That will only happen

once the larger, deeply rooted insti-

tutional barriers to higher educa-

tion are acknowledged and re-

moved so that students, regardless

of the status and wealth of their

parents, have truly equitable op-

portunities for admission into the

university of their choice. Disman-

tling these systemic barriers will

require universities and the rest of

the education system to work to

end the inequities they create and

promote — ones that don’t usually

make global headlines.

Robert Blake Watsonis

president of the Undergraduate

Students Assn. Council at UCLA,

Trenton Stoneis president of

the Undergraduate Student

Government at USC, Erica

Scottis president of the

Associated Students of Stanford

University and Kahlil Greene

is president of the Yale College

Council.

What’s legal in college admissions is a real scandal

By Robert Blake Watson,
Trenton Stone, Erica Scott
and Kahlil Greene

In the El Paso suspect’s online

writing, he expressed a fear that

Trumpism wasn’t long for this

world. “The Democrat party,” he

wrote, “will own America and

they know it.”

The Gilroy gunman com-

plained that nature had been

destroyed and was now “over-

crowd[ed]” with “hoards of mesti-

zos and Silicon Valley white”

people (though he used a gen-

dered epithet for “people”).

Though the Dayton shooter

described himself as a leftist

hungry for a socialist uprising, all

three of these men last week

seemed to believe that some

group of interlopers — either

people of color or feminized elites

or both — had seized control of

the country.

The panic about a phantom

occupation cuts across the politi-

cal spectrum. It doesn’t matter

who’s in power in Washington, the

thinking goes: American culture

is increasingly dominated by a

conniving overclass, imagined

variously to be headquartered in

Silicon Valley, the banks, the

media, major American cities,

academia and Hollywood.

In the U.S., one common

catchall word for the enemy is

“political correctness.”

Last week in an article in

Politico, Tim Chapman, the exe-

cutive director of Heritage Action

for America, a conservative lob-

bying group, cited polling that

found a strong aversion on the

part of most voters to “political

correctness” as the scourge of —

well — everyone. Eighty percent

of voters in the middle of the

spectrum, according to polls, are

averse to political correctness.

And more than three-quarters of

Republicans, according to Herit-

age Action’s own data, said it was

a “major” problem.

Political correctness is an

imaginary ideology espoused by

exactly no one. It’s said to have

something to do with Marxists —

or maybe with identity politics,

the nightmare of many Marxists.

As nebulous as it is as a concept,

it’s the name for a secular Satan

— for whatever occult force has

seemingly hijacked the nation.

Women, people of color, and

certain white male elites (dispar-

aged with emasculating lan-

guage) are often the face of this

force — and the ones frequently

targeted by mass murderers.

What makes the attack on

political correctness so disturb-

ing is that the ideology doesn’t

exist anywhere but in the radio-

active contempt for it.

In the past three years, Trump

has taught Americans of every

stripe to ignore our actual inter-

ests — peace, prosperity, educa-

tion, social harmony — in favor of

shadowboxing with cartoon

enemies that dance around in his

head.

It should come as no surprise

that, for three years, extremists

have blown past shadowboxing

and taken up arms against the

P.C. phantoms.

But because these figures

don’t exist, they’ve had to shoot

civilians at random, and tell

themselves they’re part of a revo-

lution.

Twitter: @page

W

ith more than

30 civilians

murdered last

week in massa-

cres in Cali-

fornia, Texas and Ohio, the ram-

pages across the country have

been widely denounced as terror-

ism.

On Sunday, federal officials

announced they were treating the

El Paso shootings “as a domestic

terrorism case, and we’re going to

do what we do to terrorists in this

country, which is deliver swift and

certain justice.” Ivanka Trump

used even more sinister language:

“White supremacy, like all other

forms of terrorism, is an evil that

must be destroyed.”

It is imprecise to equate an

ideology, white supremacy, which

apparently motivated at least one

of the attacks, with a tactic, ter-

rorism. But it is also understand-

able. Terrorism is a notoriously

slippery word. And of course,

politicians, on the spur of the

moment, use the word “terror-

ism” chiefly to signal their out-

rage and toughness.

So is it useful to call the mass

murders in the U.S. terrorism?

The three gunmen were cer-

tainly unlawful combatants using

violence against civilians.

They also professed or had

studied extremist ideologies of

one sort or another. The suspect

in El Paso posted a manifesto

saying the attack was “a response

to the Hispanic invasion of

Texas,” according to police. Less

is known about the Gilroy, Calif.,

gunman, but he had posted an

online recommendation for a

discredited book on social Dar-

winism that justified slavery. The

Dayton, Ohio, gunman played in

a “pornogrind” band that per-

formed misogynistic songs with

themes of gore and brutal sexual

assault. He also reportedly kept a

“rape list.”

But does committing violence

against civilians and possessing

an extremist ideology auto-

matically make someone a terror-

ist?

The tactic of terrorism has

generally been used by those

resisting a government or an

occupying army.

During the French Revolution,

when terrorism got its name,

political violence by the lower

classes was part of a campaign to

panic the upper classes, and

shake the monarchy out of power.

In Northern Ireland in the 1960s,

the Irish Republican Army regu-

larly committed violence against

the British army, whom it consid-

ered occupiers, as well as Protes-

tant civilians, whom it perceived

as aligned with the British.

In this context, the narrative

of recent mass murderers in

America is supremely incoherent.

That is, unless there isan

imagined occupation in the U.S.:

a cultural one, if not a political

one.

Are the recent

mass shootings

terrorist acts?

Trump has taught us to

ignore our actual interests

in favor of attacking

cartoon enemies.

VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

S

ix of the 10deadliest mass
shootings in U.S. history
occurred in this decade. Al-
though these massacres
are always followed by in-
tense public debate about gun con-
trol, they rarely lead to meaningful
action in Congress. Should we ex-
pect anything different after the
rampages in Gilroy, El Paso and
Dayton, which killed 34 people?
Pessimists would say no. After
all, the political clout of the Na-
tional Rifle Assn. has been a major
obstacle to gun reform for decades,
with a membership that is unusu-
ally politically active. In fact, many
NRA members are single-issue
voters who refuse to support can-
didates who are not sufficiently
“pro-gun.” Lawmakers in districts
with a fair number of gun owners,
not surprisingly, believe they’ll pay
a heavy political price if they sup-
port any form of gun control legis-
lation and underestimate the ex-
tent of public support for it.
The activism of NRA members
is no coincidence. The organiza-
tion has spent decades carefully
constructing a social identity gen-
erally around gun ownership (not
merely for NRA members). Using
its widely circulated magazines
and popular firearms programs as
vehicles for advancing this identity,
the NRA has portrayed guns not
just as tools for recreation and self-
defense, but also as symbols of who
gun owners are and what they col-
lectively value. The NRA uses its
publications not simply to provide
information but to create a highly
politicized view of what it means to
own guns. In this view, gun owners
are seen as patriotic, law-abiding
citizens who defend the American
tradition against foreign and do-
mestic threats.
Whenever gun control becomes

a matter of political debate after a

mass shooting, the NRA portrays

that identity as being under threat.

Gun owners — who believe that

their political opponents are not

just advancing flawed legislation,

but also attacking their values —

tend to respond in large numbers.

We’ve seen this result many

times over after gun-related trage-

dies. Many politicians, fearing the

wrath of the NRA and its members,

either reaffirm their opposition to

gun regulations or attempt to de-

flect the conversation away from

firearms by rehashing spurious

talking points about mental health

issues or video games.

Even when lawmakers signal

that they may be willing to con-

sider new gun legislation, their

words may be disingenuous. The

NRA’s Republican allies have in

the past attempted to reduce pub-

lic pressure by stating their open-

ness to gun control, but then found

ways to drag the legislative process

out until media attention subsided

and bills in Congress fizzled. Oppo-

sition by Senate Majority Leader

Mitch McConnell has been enough

to stop legislative proposals in

their tracks. A veto threat from

President Trump — who has spo-

ken at the NRA’s annual conven-

tion for five consecutive years —

would have the same effect.

Still, there are two reasons to

think change is more likely now

than it has been for decades, even

against this entrenched dynamic.

First, the gun control move-

ment is stronger now than at any

point since at least the early 1990s.

Gun control advocacy efforts es-

tablished after the Sandy Hook

massacre in Connecticut in 2012

and last year’s mass school shoot-

ing in Parkland, Fla., are gaining

momentum. Activism in support of

gun control is no longer lagging

quite so far behind activism in op-

position to it, as groups like Moms

Demand Action work to build a

sense of identity among Americans

who are fed up with gun violence.

Second, the NRA is in turmoil.

It is being investigated for financial

improprieties that could threaten

its status as a nonprofit organiza-

tion and it’s involved in several law-

suits, which have produced embar-

rassing publicity. And it is also ex-

periencing substantial infighting;

its president, Oliver North, and its

longtime top lobbyist, Chris Cox,

were recently pushed out of the or-

ganization because of their in-

volvement in a failed coup attempt

directed at the NRA’s chief execu-

tive, Wayne LaPierre. The leader-

ship controversies don’t inspire

faith among rank-and-file mem-

bers even as the group faces seri-

ous financial trouble.

Even if no substantial gun regu-

lations end up passing in the cur-

rent Congress, the reinvigoration

of the gun control movement and

the internal disorder in the NRA

indicate that the prospects for gun

reform in the middle or long term

are promising. Many Democratic

candidates won in the 2018

midterms by heavily emphasizing

support for gun control during

their campaigns, and that trend is

continuing in the Democratic pres-

idential primary.

Whether meaningful change

will happen in the coming years

may depend on whether gun con-

trol activists can take a page from

the NRA playbook. That means

figuring out how to sustain mo-

mentum by cultivating a deep

sense of shared identity among the

millions of Americans who are

tired of widespread gun violence.

Matthew J. Lacombeis an

assistant professor of political

science at Barnard College,

Columbia University.

THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSN.hosted President Trump at its annual convention in Dallas in

2018. The organization has spent decades constructing a social identity around gun ownership.

Los Angeles Times

Gun control activists can

learn from NRA playbook

Try building a shared identity for people tired of gun violence

By Matthew J. Lacombe