Cornelius Range V | Rethinking self-reliance

The concept of self-reliance has always been intertwined with the American persona. However, somewhere along the way, a double standard arose; some people are now left to cling to the hope offered by self-reliance, while others are entitled to something much more tangible.

Last week, I attended a panel on Penn’s economic diversity, which was prompted by a column published in the Almanac in September by English professor Peter Conn. In the column, Conn criticized Penn and its peer institutions for not doing more to recruit students from low-income backgrounds. He pointed out that, in the college admissions process, “deference to legacies competes with the effort to enroll lower-income students, virtually none of whom will be the children of alumni of these elite institutions.”

He argued that, to make amends for this consideration, the U.S. News and World Report rankings of universities should adjust its algorithm to include points for economic diversity. He went on to say that, “in every domain of our country, including college admissions, no one speaks for the poor.” And he’s right, of course.

Considering that students whose parents are alumni are privileged to certain advantages even before it’s time to apply for colleges. The extra influence exerted by alumni and donors, which manifests itself through legacy admissions, serves only as a means to ensure that the status quo is preserved.

In his prepared remarks for Wharton School students, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) spoke of economic mobility in America. But protecting the status quo only makes it more difficult for the “9-year-old poor inner -city girl” described by Cantor to find success. She is left unrepresented.

Even if this little girl works twice as hard as you or me, when it comes to time to apply for college, her GPA and SAT scores likely won’t be as high as the averages for Penn students. Maybe she won’t get in but is instead accepted to a different university, one that is not able to provide its students with the opportunities given to students at top-tier schools. If there’s a recession and she’s laid off, her story will contrast with that of a student whose test scores may have marginally better than hers but was afforded special consideration in the admissions process because his parents were alumni.

When she realizes that the ladder that she had to climb to get to the top was much harder to climb than the ladders of many who actually made it, she might decide to take a stand against inequality and unequal opportunity by protesting. And when students at Ivy League universities shower her with reductionist criticisms by calling her lazy and telling her to stop complaining and to find a job, she won’t be surprised at all.

In his remarks, Cantor stressed the need for the type of self-reliance mentioned above as the remedy for our economic woes. He wrote that, for this hypothetical 9-year-old to succeed, “she needs to know that the rules are the same for everybody. That although she may have to work harder than many of us, she needs to know that she has a fair shot at making it in this country.” Never mind the fact that this last sentence implies a paradox of sorts (if someone has to work harder than most people to get to the same end, she’s at a disadvantage). Cantor should acknowledge that the rules aren’t the same for everybody.

I think most Americans — and most people in general, for that matter — bet their dreams on the principle of self-reliance, which should please those like Cantor who claim to ascribe most to this belief.

However, in order to promote this ideal in good faith, leaders like Cantor should either be outspoken in the aim of removing institutional features like legacy admissions (which, by their very nature, stand contrary to the idea that individuals’ labor alone should determine their success) or they should work tirelessly to revitalize the public-school system so the disparity between elite prep schools and public schools are minimized, thus giving students some semblance of an equal opportunity.

Without meeting these conditions, advocating self-reliance as public policy is not only the equivalent of force-feeding people a pipe dream, it’s also a scam.

Cornelius Range is a College senior from Memphis, Tenn. His email address is crang@sas.upenn.edu. Plead the Fifth appears every Wednesday.

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