[lbo-talk] "The Chosen"

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

> 
> If this new admissions system seems familiar, that's because it is
> essentially the same system that the Ivy League uses to this day.
> According to Karabel, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton didn't abandon the
> elevation of character once the Jewish crisis passed. They
> institutionalized it._______________________________________________

The "country club" mentality of the Ivy League - and other elite private
universities like JHU - is perhaps their most sickening and nauseating
aspect - but necessary, since it is the only factor that distinguished them
from public schools (quality of education is the same).  I think this "being
one of the boys" club mentality is a distinguishing feature of the US
academe - far more pronounced here than in European institutions (which
suffer from other problems).  I think is the legacy of that scum of all
scums, the British gentry.

This is, btw, the main reason why I applied only to public graduate schools
and specifically refused to consider the Ivy League.  I did not get to
Berkeley (my first choice) but I got to Rutgers and CUNY and finally settled
for Rutgers.  Likewise, I would never join any "fraternity," "faculty club"
and the like, whose modus operandi is to create social status by exclusion
and entry barriers.  

PS. I love the Jacobin tradition of no intermediation between citizen and
the state and thus abolishing all clubs and lodges.  But it works only when
you have a truly representative government.

Wojtek