Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Two letters from Yale University reached the Callcott family home in San Mateo on the same spring day in 2020. One revealed there would be no place for Sophie Callcott at the Ivy League campus that fall. The other asked her dad, a Yale graduate, for money.
“We burned both letters in the fire pit,” laughed Callcott, now 22.
.... Unlike Yale, Stanford found a place for Callcott. Though she benefited from her parents’ connection to Stanford, Callcott has since joined a national wave of students working to eliminate the practice, which they say perpetuates privilege. Prompted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year making it illegal for colleges to consider race or ethnicity in admissions, the students ask why having the benefit of a connection to the school should be any different.
... Assembly Member Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, who authored AB1780, told the Chronicle that legacy admissions are “affirmative action for the wealthiest Americans.”