In reality, Occidental College has ticked off potential white donors and white alums like me by embracing anti-white bigotry, socialist professors, and identity politics. Moreover, it ruined the prestige of the school by lowering its standards in order to make the school less white.
I remember how its first black president, John Slaughter, told a group of alumni with white faces that he looked forward - essentially - to a future where there were fewer white faces around. I was offended. I still think Slaughter was a sick jerk. He was completely unqualified to serve as a college president. He had no experience as a fundraiser or as a liberal arts college administrator. Under his feckless leadership, support for students shot up so high and so quick that the Board of Directors had to draw down the endowment to keep the school going.
I complained to him in writing once and he ended up calling me. He denied having said he wanted to see fewer white faces around even though his comments had been printed in the Los Angeles Times. I complained, as I remember, about affirmative action and he said it was clear I had a personal beef with the college. Duh. He was especially incensed when I complained about how admission standards at Occidental College had been dropped to allow for more non-whites on campus. His response, as I recall, was quite odd. "Are you suggesting these students aren't qualified to be here?" This was freaky, in part, because my concern is not whether or not the students were qualified, but whether they were the best of the best. To be sure, I have to give Slaughter credit for calling me back. Subsequent presidents of this declining school haven't done even that...
Since then, Occidental College has been a leader in rolling over to please leftist students and professors with everything from denying guys due process to fight sexual assault and giving in to the demands of black students who took over the administrative building. The article in the Wall Street Journal is reprinted below, after the break. There are a number of really twisted people on the faculty including Lisa Wade, a leader in the fight against toxic masculinity. Or, to be more correct, just masculinity itself. As has been reported by The College Fix, Lisa Wade rejects the notion of "toxic masculinity," saying it is time to recognize that "it is masculinity itself that has become the problem."
Heroes of the school include ethical lightweights like leftist journalist Steve Coll '80 who - as far as I can tell - left his wife Susan for an intern working at his non-profit organization. (I used to be friends with Steve and Susan.) The husband of one of my Occidental College friends, Joe
The capital campaign, of course, is being led by president Jonathan Veitch who distinguished himself as among the nation's most groveling academic leaders who allowed students to occupy his office, terrify his staff, and get away with a number of absurd identity based policy changes.
I have a couple of hot takes on this....
Occidental College has been a victim of politically correct nonsense for a number of years. It reduced standards to allow more black and Latinos to attend. The negative consequence of this reduction in standards is that subsequent alumni are both less bright and less wealthy than earlier alumni.
Occidental College leaders like John Slaughter, the first black Oxy president, went out of their way to discourage whites from teaching at the school or sending their children there as students. The problem in Slaughter's view was basically that the school was too white.
The school has gone off the deep end in hiring socialist/Communist faculty members who despise whites in principle and who certainly have no respect for those who have acquired any large amount of wealth. Such people, to these socialist/Communist faculty members, are their enemies...not their donors.
I attended at talk at Oxy in 2012 where I overheard Eric Newhall, quoted in the WSJ article, bragging about how much better Oxy was now that it had fewer white people on the faculty. He didn't realize I was a young white guy who was pissed off at the discrimination the school practiced against young white conservative scholars. He looked shocked that a white guy would be upset at a system where he and his relatives got screwed just because of their race.
I wouldn't give a dime to these people. If affirmative action isn't evil, nothing is evil.
I got a request from the school asking me, as an alum, to give to their capital campaign. I've considered the school my enemy for years. I wish I had read this article before I filled out the questionnaire. If they are a bad bet for Moody's Investor Services, then they are a bad bet for me too.
One day in 2012, an admissions director at Occidental College got a surprising email. William
“Rick” Singer proposed that the school reconsider an application from an academically
challenged daughter of a wealthy family.
He wanted the school to overturn her rejection, and he suggested the parents would give the
school money above and beyond tuition.
“Are you kidding?” an incredulous Mr. Singer wrote about her not being admitted. “We can
create a win-win for both of us.”
Vince Cuseo, the admissions official at the small California liberal-arts school, gave a simple response: No.
Mr. Singer, the admitted mastermind of what federal prosecutors have called the largest admissions-cheating scandal in the country, had reason to be hopeful. He had made inroads into brand-name colleges and universities around the country scores of times, exploiting higher education’s focus on money and willingness to give extra consideration to wealthy applicants. Mr. Singer’s illegal operation has spawned criminal charges against 52 people, 29 of whom have pleaded guilty or plan to. It has also further highlighted the role of money in admissions, and the often wide gulf between high ideals of meritocracy and mercenary business practices.
Occidental, a small, private liberal-arts college in Los Angeles, has charted a different path. Two generations ago, it opted out of the chase for well-heeled students and put its money into scholarships for less well-off minorities. Those decisions, however, have come at a cost. Occidental’s $434 million endowment is roughly $70 million smaller than what it might have been had the school prioritized prestige and wealth, according to Amos Himmelstein, the school’s vice president for planning and finance. While the school boasts beautiful beaux arts architecture and is building a new aquatic center, the infrastructure hasn’t kept up with improvements made by its peers, he says.
The question, Mr. Cuseo says, is at what price “are you willing to sell your soul”? The once-booming age-old business model of higher education faces tremendous pressure due to demographic changes, disruptive technology and the tightest labor market in half a century. As a result, colleges and universities face rising incentives to cut corners or outright lie to boost rankings. They are also under pressure to use legal backdoor strategies to attract affluent students and donations to boost bottom lines.
Mr. Singer exploited these forces to create what he called his side door strategy, in which he bribed college coaches to tag clients’ children as walk-on athletes even though they didn’t play the sport. He also rigged SAT and ACT scores. Occidental has largely resisted these temptations.
A turning point for the school came in the 1980s, as Los Angeles transformed into one of the nation’s most diverse cities. Occidental trustees, many local business owners themselves, felt there weren’t enough educated minorities to fill jobs.
Occidental reworked its curriculum and enrollment practices to draw more black and Latino students, said Eric Newhall, a retired Occidental English professor who headed the school’s faculty council at the time. The school emerged as one of the nation’s most racially and socioeconomically integrated private schools, long before many universities were prioritizing diversity.
One concern across the school quickly arose: If it turned away wealthy white students, who would pay the bills? The question divided the school, said Mary Weismantel, a young professor at Occidental in the 1980s who now teaches at Northwestern University.
Today, Occidental is 49% nonwhite and attracts fewer wealthy students than the vast majority of its peers. It also boasts one of the highest percentage of poor and working-class students receiving Pell Grants and has one of the highest rates of economic mobility of its peers, according to Harvard economist Raj Chetty and Occidental. But financial stress has followed. In 1995 Occidental’s endowment ranked 120th in the nation. By last year it was 208th.
The school has lost ground partly because of its commitment to enroll poor and working-class students who need grants. Occidental’s need-blind enrollment program climbed from 11% of the budget in the mid-1980s to 24% by 1993.
That December, then-President John Slaughter said the increase in financial spending “has escaped the boundaries of reasonableness,” according to an alumni publication. The school eventually had to dip into its endowment to pay the bills. And today, while it maintains a strong reputation and a middling $434 million endowment, it still faces underlying fiscal issues.
In September, Moody’s Investors Service revised the outlook on Occidental’s $84 million in debt, which has a solid Aa3 rating, to negative from stable, citing the school’s “commitment to affordability” and lagging fundraising.
These headwinds mean dormitories are cramped and nearly half are without air conditioning. The steel lawn-irrigation system installed in the 1930s is thoroughly rusted out.
The campus is pretty and tranquil, but amenities pale when compared with those offered elsewhere: lazy rivers, palatial fitness centers, climbing gyms, high-tech libraries and swanky apartment-style dorms. “Does that influence incoming freshman? I think it does,” said one prominent alumnus, who has been active in fundraising. “The sad reality is that colleges that have leveraged white wealthy students have really prospered.”
Unlike other schools, it doesn’t heavily prioritize athletes or legacies in admissions. Occidental fields 21 varsity teams but offers little credit in the admissions process for athletic prowess, according to school officials. The idea isn’t to be the best but to stay competitive, said Mr. Cuseo, now the vice president for enrollment and dean of admissions. In 2017 the school had to cancel the last four games of the football season because there weren’t enough healthy players.
The team has since rebuilt. In September, a study analyzing admission data at Harvard showed 43% of white students are either athletes, legacies or were children of donors or faculty. A similar count at Occidental was 18%, school spokesman Jim Tranquada said. Occidental also resists gaming the rankings. Perhaps the most widespread strategy to manufacture an appearance of selectivity is lowering the bar for applicants in order to attract
more. That generates more rejections, making a school appear more selective. Occidental hasn’t done this. “There are a lot of things you can do that are pretty simple, and I’ve been in faculty meetings where it’s been discussed,” said Occidental Professor John McCormack. “But it’s just not who we are.”
In 2004, Mr. Singer assembled an advisory board for his then company CollegeSource, which at the time had a legitimate division. The board included five prominent higher-education figures, including Ted Mitchell, then president of Occidental. Mr. Mitchell, who left Occidental in 2005, has said he was an unpaid adviser to Mr. Singer’s venture 15 years ago to provide counseling to low-income students.
The prominent Occidental alumnus who also knew Mr. Singer recalls hearing Mr. Singer call Occidental “dumb” for having what he portrayed as too thick of a wall between admissions and fundraising departments. Mr. Cuseo says he has never felt pressure to take any of the students if they don’t meet school standards. Five years ago, the development office recommended he look at an applicant whose prominent and widely known name made his “eyes kind of open up,” he says.
Yet, “it was pretty darn clear that the student didn’t deserve to be admitted to Occidental,” he says. The school rejected the teen. Mr. Cuseo said the email from Mr. Singer in 2012 was extremely unusual. An upset Mr. Singer requested a meeting to discuss helping his client’s child “find her way to becoming a student at Occidental” after she had been rejected. Mr. Singer also criticized Occidental’s admission policies. “You are off base,” Mr. Cuseo replied.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
Occidental College has been a victim of politically correct nonsense for a number of years. It reduced standards to allow more black and Latinos to attend. The negative consequence of this reduction in standards is that subsequent alumni are both less bright and less wealthy than earlier alumni.
Occidental College leaders like John Slaughter, the first black Oxy president, went out of their way to discourage whites from teaching at the school or sending their children there as students. The problem in Slaughter's view was basically that the school was too white.
The school has gone off the deep end in hiring socialist/Communist faculty members who despise whites in principle and who certainly have no respect for those who have acquired any large amount of wealth. Such people, to these socialist/Communist faculty members, are their enemies...not their donors.
I attended at talk at Oxy in 2012 where I overheard Eric Newhall, quoted in the WSJ article, bragging about how much better Oxy was now that it had fewer white people on the faculty. He didn't realize I was a young white guy who was pissed off at the discrimination the school practiced against young white conservative scholars. He looked shocked that a white guy would be upset at a system where he and his relatives got screwed just because of their race.
I wouldn't give a dime to these people. If affirmative action isn't evil, nothing is evil.
I got a request from the school asking me, as an alum, to give to their capital campaign. I've considered the school my enemy for years. I wish I had read this article before I filled out the questionnaire. If they are a bad bet for Moody's Investor Services, then they are a bad bet for me too.
When Admissions Adviser Rick Singer Called, This School Said, ‘No, Thanks’
Years ago, Occidental College opted not to use admissions to chase money. The decision came with a cost.
Nov. 6, 2019 530 am ET By Jennifer Levitz and Douglas Belkin
Vince Cuseo, the admissions official at the small California liberal-arts school, gave a simple response: No.
Mr. Singer, the admitted mastermind of what federal prosecutors have called the largest admissions-cheating scandal in the country, had reason to be hopeful. He had made inroads into brand-name colleges and universities around the country scores of times, exploiting higher education’s focus on money and willingness to give extra consideration to wealthy applicants. Mr. Singer’s illegal operation has spawned criminal charges against 52 people, 29 of whom have pleaded guilty or plan to. It has also further highlighted the role of money in admissions, and the often wide gulf between high ideals of meritocracy and mercenary business practices.
Occidental, a small, private liberal-arts college in Los Angeles, has charted a different path. Two generations ago, it opted out of the chase for well-heeled students and put its money into scholarships for less well-off minorities. Those decisions, however, have come at a cost. Occidental’s $434 million endowment is roughly $70 million smaller than what it might have been had the school prioritized prestige and wealth, according to Amos Himmelstein, the school’s vice president for planning and finance. While the school boasts beautiful beaux arts architecture and is building a new aquatic center, the infrastructure hasn’t kept up with improvements made by its peers, he says.
The question, Mr. Cuseo says, is at what price “are you willing to sell your soul”? The once-booming age-old business model of higher education faces tremendous pressure due to demographic changes, disruptive technology and the tightest labor market in half a century. As a result, colleges and universities face rising incentives to cut corners or outright lie to boost rankings. They are also under pressure to use legal backdoor strategies to attract affluent students and donations to boost bottom lines.
Mr. Singer exploited these forces to create what he called his side door strategy, in which he bribed college coaches to tag clients’ children as walk-on athletes even though they didn’t play the sport. He also rigged SAT and ACT scores. Occidental has largely resisted these temptations.
A turning point for the school came in the 1980s, as Los Angeles transformed into one of the nation’s most diverse cities. Occidental trustees, many local business owners themselves, felt there weren’t enough educated minorities to fill jobs.
Occidental reworked its curriculum and enrollment practices to draw more black and Latino students, said Eric Newhall, a retired Occidental English professor who headed the school’s faculty council at the time. The school emerged as one of the nation’s most racially and socioeconomically integrated private schools, long before many universities were prioritizing diversity.
One concern across the school quickly arose: If it turned away wealthy white students, who would pay the bills? The question divided the school, said Mary Weismantel, a young professor at Occidental in the 1980s who now teaches at Northwestern University.
Today, Occidental is 49% nonwhite and attracts fewer wealthy students than the vast majority of its peers. It also boasts one of the highest percentage of poor and working-class students receiving Pell Grants and has one of the highest rates of economic mobility of its peers, according to Harvard economist Raj Chetty and Occidental. But financial stress has followed. In 1995 Occidental’s endowment ranked 120th in the nation. By last year it was 208th.
The school has lost ground partly because of its commitment to enroll poor and working-class students who need grants. Occidental’s need-blind enrollment program climbed from 11% of the budget in the mid-1980s to 24% by 1993.
That December, then-President John Slaughter said the increase in financial spending “has escaped the boundaries of reasonableness,” according to an alumni publication. The school eventually had to dip into its endowment to pay the bills. And today, while it maintains a strong reputation and a middling $434 million endowment, it still faces underlying fiscal issues.
In September, Moody’s Investors Service revised the outlook on Occidental’s $84 million in debt, which has a solid Aa3 rating, to negative from stable, citing the school’s “commitment to affordability” and lagging fundraising.
These headwinds mean dormitories are cramped and nearly half are without air conditioning. The steel lawn-irrigation system installed in the 1930s is thoroughly rusted out.
The campus is pretty and tranquil, but amenities pale when compared with those offered elsewhere: lazy rivers, palatial fitness centers, climbing gyms, high-tech libraries and swanky apartment-style dorms. “Does that influence incoming freshman? I think it does,” said one prominent alumnus, who has been active in fundraising. “The sad reality is that colleges that have leveraged white wealthy students have really prospered.”
Unlike other schools, it doesn’t heavily prioritize athletes or legacies in admissions. Occidental fields 21 varsity teams but offers little credit in the admissions process for athletic prowess, according to school officials. The idea isn’t to be the best but to stay competitive, said Mr. Cuseo, now the vice president for enrollment and dean of admissions. In 2017 the school had to cancel the last four games of the football season because there weren’t enough healthy players.
The team has since rebuilt. In September, a study analyzing admission data at Harvard showed 43% of white students are either athletes, legacies or were children of donors or faculty. A similar count at Occidental was 18%, school spokesman Jim Tranquada said. Occidental also resists gaming the rankings. Perhaps the most widespread strategy to manufacture an appearance of selectivity is lowering the bar for applicants in order to attract
more. That generates more rejections, making a school appear more selective. Occidental hasn’t done this. “There are a lot of things you can do that are pretty simple, and I’ve been in faculty meetings where it’s been discussed,” said Occidental Professor John McCormack. “But it’s just not who we are.”
In 2004, Mr. Singer assembled an advisory board for his then company CollegeSource, which at the time had a legitimate division. The board included five prominent higher-education figures, including Ted Mitchell, then president of Occidental. Mr. Mitchell, who left Occidental in 2005, has said he was an unpaid adviser to Mr. Singer’s venture 15 years ago to provide counseling to low-income students.
The prominent Occidental alumnus who also knew Mr. Singer recalls hearing Mr. Singer call Occidental “dumb” for having what he portrayed as too thick of a wall between admissions and fundraising departments. Mr. Cuseo says he has never felt pressure to take any of the students if they don’t meet school standards. Five years ago, the development office recommended he look at an applicant whose prominent and widely known name made his “eyes kind of open up,” he says.
Yet, “it was pretty darn clear that the student didn’t deserve to be admitted to Occidental,” he says. The school rejected the teen. Mr. Cuseo said the email from Mr. Singer in 2012 was extremely unusual. An upset Mr. Singer requested a meeting to discuss helping his client’s child “find her way to becoming a student at Occidental” after she had been rejected. Mr. Singer also criticized Occidental’s admission policies. “You are off base,” Mr. Cuseo replied.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
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