Source: San Francisco Chronicle
A proposed ban on “legacy admissions,” favorable treatment for college applicants whose parents were alumni or financial donors, hit a brick wall in the California Legislature in 2019. But the author of the measure says it’s time to take another look now that the Supreme Court has outlawed affirmative action for racial minorities at the nation’s colleges and universities.
“If we cared about setting an even playing field, we shouldn’t have legacy admissions,” Assembly Member Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, told The Chronicle. After the Varsity Blues scandal, in which more than 50 parents have been accused since 2019 of bribing coaches and college officials to approve college admissions, he said, “it seemed way too clear there were ways that wealthy families could get their children into elite private schools.”
Ting’s proposal to prohibit legacy admissions, AB697, introduced in 2019, failed to win support in its first Assembly committee — a result he attributed to influential universities, though none declared formal opposition to the bill. He had to water it down to require only that colleges submit annual reports on their admissions through the fall of 2024.