揭秘常春藤联盟为捐赠者的孩子提供特殊待遇

胡老师

Recent Scandal At Brown Highlights How The Ivy League Grants Special Treatment To Children Of Donors Christopher Rim 【Forbes】

This Sunday, the Providence Journal published an exposé by four student reporters from Ivy League school Brown University, revealing how their school’s administration enabled preferential treatment for students of wealthy and influential parents. In the article, they discuss the details of exclusive, invite-only dinners held twice a year for a select group of Brown students—largely from wealthy families—invited by alumnus Martin “Marty” Granoff, who not only picks up the $9,000+ dinner tab, but curates the invite list. These ‘Granoff Dinners’ are not official university events, but the invites are sent out and logistics handled by the university’s Advancement office, and students have leveraged connections made at the dinners to gain better student housing from Brown’s Office of Residential Life. In the wake of the story, Brown has discontinued their support for the dinners, but the Granoff Dinners are only a symptom of a larger network of privilege, influence and exclusivity that will continue.

The President of Brown University, Christina Paxson, published a response on Tuesday that slams the piece for having “no data or facts,” and for not talking at greater length about Brown’s support for low- and middle-income students and Mr. Granoff’s charitable efforts (both of which were detailed at length in the initial article). However, the President did not directly address allegations in the article that, to me, are far more serious than providing a wealthy alum with logistical support in inviting a select group of students to a series of private dinner parties. The article discusses how well-connected students have leveraged those connections into job opportunities and preferential treatment from the Office of Residential Life, from room changes to permission to live off-campus before senior year. Most schools have systems in place for students to ask for preferential housing due to disability or other considerations—but the more students who ask, the less accommodating schools are able to be. It’s an example of the tragedy of the commons—in this case, the limited resource being better or off-campus housing.

Nineteen percent of students at Brown are from the top one percent of income, the highest of any Ivy League except Dartmouth (20%), according to a report by the New York Times. In my article Can You Buy Your Way Into Harvard?, I spoke about the power that donations and influence can have when it comes to helping a student gain admission into an Ivy League or other elite school. When it comes to children of major donors, it seems that university officials are looking for a reason to say yes, rather than a reason to say no—and apparently this mentality extends beyond admissions. The ability that well-connected students have to escalate their special housing requests to more senior people at the Office, and the potential sway that donors have when advocating on behalf of a specific student, is troubling. That being said, I’m hesitant to place the blame entirely on Brown’s Office of Residential Life for offering these students better housing when they repeatedly ask for it. I think it’s likely that they try to accommodate every student, but that the students of wealthy parents are more likely to escalate or continue making the same request after having been initially denied.

It’s the same mentality that leads to students from wealthy schools seeking out and receiving extended time on the SAT and ACT. I think that in general, students who apply for extra time for standardized tests do legitimately struggle with attention issues or other legitimate considerations, but I also believe that certain students are more likely to seek out and receive those accommodations. For example, there is an almost direct correlation between the average income in a neighborhood and the number of mental health drugs purchased at pharmacies in those neighborhoods. There is also a large disparity in diagnosis and medication use between white students and African-American and Latino students, and the authors of a prominent studyargue that this disparity comes not from over-diagnosis and over-treatment of white students but from under-diagnosis and under-treatment in African-American and Latino students. In other words, the issue is not that some are over-privileged, but that some are under-privileged, and the appropriate response is not to crack down on students seeking out special accommodations, but to expand access to and awareness of these accommodations to all students. As student-activist Shawn Young states in the original article, if “a small group of students are being treated differently by the administration, [that’s] hamstringing the work that the school has already done to help students who don’t come into the school with those influences or with that social capital from being connected to the Granoffs.”

Social capital is absolutely the right word to use—this story isn’t, at its core, about literal wealth. As one attendee stated in the initial article, “I don’t think [Granoff] chooses to invite wealthy kids. I just think they are the kids of his friends, and connections arise from that.” The issue is not that an alumnus of an elite school wants to take his friends’ children out to dinner—and from the article, it even seems that Mr. Granoff makes an effort to include other students, including the recipients of his scholarships (one of which he established for the children of 9/11 first responders). I think the issue is that someone can graduate from a school like Brown, which makes concerted efforts to admit students from all backgrounds, with a network of connections that are deeply homogeneous. I think that most people are willing to bend the rules or grant special considerations to those they have a personal connection with. The instinct to help our own connections first is a deeply human one, and although we like to think of our society as entirely merit-driven, most people reflexively try help their own connections first. It’s why networking is so powerful, and why, in theory, something like a Brown education can be a great force for leveling that playing field. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen, and if institutions like Brown continue giving preferential treatment to students with more social capital, those students will continue to have impetus to value those connections over others.