Chapter Content
Okay, here we go.
So, you know, I stumbled across this really interesting thing, a chapter, actually, about the kind of, I don’t know, mysterious case of the Harvard Women’s Rugby team. And it starts with this, like, pretty standard scene, a rugby game, right? On a kind of cold fall day, somewhere at Princeton. Princeton's in black and orange, Harvard's in white. The usual stuff, right? A few people watching, a livestream on YouTube, gotta check that internet connection, you know how it is.
And, well, the announcer's reading off the players, Eva, Brogan, Maya, all those names, and then a warning about, you know, no racist, homophobic, transphobic discrimination, all that. You know, the kind of boilerplate stuff you hear. National anthem, and off they go.
Now, Princeton's program is pretty new, a couple of years old, mostly high school tennis and volleyball converts, hardly any real rugby experience. Harvard though, that's different, right? The announcers point out they've got, like, a ton of depth, people who've been playing for ages. And, uh, they'd been just steamrolling teams, Quinnipiac, American International, Queens University of Charlotte, just like, nobody could touch them. Plus, the last time Harvard played Princeton, they won by a hundred and two to zero! I mean, wow.
Then, of course, the rain starts. Light at first, then heavier. Field gets slippery, players are soaked, fans huddle under umbrellas. And you get this commentary, this play-by-play, but it's all like, rugby-speak, you know? Eva Rankin taken down by Brooke Beers, something something five-meter line, it's just gibberish if you don't already know the game.
Two hours later, it's over. Harvard wins, sixty-one to five. Another one for the books, right?
But if you just stumbled upon that game, you know, after the hour or so of competition, as the rain's coming down and you’re standing there, all alone...you might start wondering, why? Why does Harvard, you know, *even* have a women's rugby team?
I mean, think about it, Harvard already offers, like, a crazy number of athletic opportunities. Over fifty campus sports clubs, and they compete in more Division I varsity sports than any other school. Basketball, cross-country, fencing, you name it, they got it. I mean, people think of those huge state schools like University of Michigan as sports powerhouses, right? But Harvard, get this, Harvard has like four times as many student-athletes, on a percentage basis, as Michigan!
And yet, in 2013, Harvard decided their female students needed *more*. So, they add women's rugby. Which means hiring coaches, trainers, recruiting athletes. And recruiting is key here, because, let's be honest, not that many young women in the US have played rugby, right? It's kinda foreign, it’s, well, pretty violent. Shoulders, collarbones, knees, concussions… I mean, some high schools offer it, but, a lot of young women, understandably, kind of shy away. It takes effort to field a college team.
The team's coach said, "Ultimately, we cast a large net." He's talking to the Harvard Crimson, the school newspaper, a few years back. "Large net" means they're recruiting all over the world. California, Utah, Colorado, Canada... and they’re working with English players, coaches in England, New Zealand, Australia. The current team? Players from Scotland, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, China, Germany, Honduras, just crazy diverse.
So, again, why go to *all* this trouble?
It gets even more puzzling when you realize how admissions work at Harvard. It's basically a two-track system. You have the normal track for smart students from all over, who compete on, you know, their actual merit. Then, there's the second track, for ALDCs, Athletes, Legacies (kids of alumni), Dean's Interest List (kids of rich people), and Children of faculty. ALDCs? They make up 30 percent of Harvard’s student body. A LOT. And their path to admission is... different.
There was this lawsuit, you know, a while back, Students for Fair Admissions suing Harvard. Eventually made it to the Supreme Court. And the weirdest part was when both sides tried to explain the ALDC system.
The plaintiff's lawyer, Adam Mortara, put up this chart, right? He's talking about "academic 1s," the top scorers. In the normal course of events, an academic 1 has a pretty good shot at getting in. But if you're a legacy, a 1, you're a lock.
He compares admission rates for regular students and ALDCs, and you see how much better the legacies do. Almost all the academic 1 legacies get in.
Then he gets to the athletes. In six years of data, they only found *one* athlete who was an academic 1.
Of course, that one athlete got in.
He goes down a level, to academic 2s. Regular student, 10 percent chance. Legacy/Dean's List/Faculty kid, 50 percent chance. Five times better.
Then he pauses, and says, "Again, the athletes almost always get in. I told you that; I’ll stop saying it."
At academic 3, it's even crazier. Regular student, 2.4 percent chance. Legacy/Dean's List/Faculty kid, seven and a half times higher, 18 percent.
Academic 4, nobody gets in the regular group. But even then, legacies and rich kids, still 3.5 percent got in!
He concludes that academic rating just isn't as important for this group. And this effect is most profoundly seen with the athletes.
The athletes always get in.
Okay, so you can kinda see why Harvard favors certain students, right? Alumni and rich people give money. Harvard likes money. So, it's good business to give their kids a leg up. Cutting a deal for faculty kids, makes sense, keep your professors happy.
What doesn't make sense is why athletes get lumped in with *those* groups.
There are articles about, you know, Harvard squash players getting recruited in New Zealand. Someone went *all the way* to New Zealand to watch a squash tournament? And give these people a *bigger* break than non-athletes get? It's so big that the *easiest* way to get into Harvard is to be the best athlete at your school, not the best student.
The dean of admissions, William Fitzsimmons, gets asked why Harvard gives athletes a "tip."
He says, it builds a sense of community, right? That having everyone gather for games unifies the institution. And it helps them attract students from California, Texas, Florida, who want the "collegiate experience."
But… really? Harvard doesn't need to attract students. They admit like three percent of applicants! And who from California is turning down Harvard because the sports scene isn't "vibrant" enough?
He tries again, saying athletes have a commitment, drive, energy that serves them well.
But again, it's dodging the question! Nobody denies athletes can learn valuable lessons. But why does Harvard value sports commitment *more* than, I don't know, writing a novel or solving hard math problems? And so much that they'll fly across the world to find women to play rugby in the rain on the edge of Princeton's campus?
None of it adds up. So, here's another theory: It has nothing to do with character or drive or community. It has to do with something called the "Magic Third" and these ideas about group proportions. Basically, what Harvard is doing is social engineering. They are just trying to control their group proportions in the student body. The thing is, they don't tell anyone they are doing it. And that is what makes it so wrong.
So, back in the 1920s, the Ivy League was freaking out because Columbia, in New York City, was filling up with Jewish students. By the early 1900s, it was, like, 40 percent Jewish. The other Ivies saw these newcomers as aliens. There was even this awful fraternity song, you know, talking about how Columbia was run by Jews, and wishing their souls would go to hell. It's pretty awful.
Abbott Lawrence Lowell, Harvard's president back then, was really alarmed. He formed a committee to figure out who was Jewish and who wasn't. They started asking about "race and color," mother's maiden name, father's birthplace, even if they had changed their name!
The results panicked him. When he took over, only ten percent of Harvard was Jewish. By 1922, it was more than twice that.
They created these admissions categories: J1, J2, J3, and "Other." J1 was definitely Jewish, J2 probably, J3 maybe. By 1925, nearly 30 percent of the freshman class was J1 or J2! They were approaching the Magic Third.
Harvard had spent years trying to raise their academic standards, you know? But now the "wrong" students were passing the exams.
So, Harvard faced a choice: keep the objective academic standards and let in more Jews, or use more subjective criteria to get the "desired" outcome.
They chose "more subjective criteria." The admissions office got more power. Now, they asked for letters of recommendation, extracurriculars, what you did on summer vacation, who your parents knew. They created these scoring systems to assess intangibles and started doing personal interviews. And they put a limit on the freshman class size, all to prevent a "dangerous increase in the proportion of Jews."
Lowell didn't want to ban all Jews, just limit the number. He thought too many Jews would drive away the non-Jews. He wanted to keep them under 15 percent, the point where they’d exert too much influence. He wanted to keep the minority group below that tipping point.
Over time, the anti-Jewish sentiment faded. But the system Lowell created stayed in place. He taught his successors how to control Harvard's group proportions.
Look at these numbers. Here are the Asian American enrollment rates at Harvard versus Caltech, another really prestigious school.
Caltech, a really meritocratic institution, has numbers all over the place. It starts at 25 percent, jumps up to almost 40, and then ends at almost 45 percent. They don't play games with athletes or legacies.
Harvard, meanwhile? The Asian numbers are almost perfectly consistent, like, 17 or 18 percent.
Caltech is what happens when you don't control group proportions. Harvard is what happens when you do. They just want to keep everything basically the same. They only want one group to go above the Magic Third.
So, going back to the beginning, why did Harvard add a women's rugby team? It's a tool for maintaining group proportions.
There was this bizarre court case, a guy named Amin Khoury paid the Georgetown tennis coach to recruit his daughter. Because he knew the "athletes always get in," at elite schools.
The trial was full of embarrassing emails and uncomfortable admissions officers. But it really helps understand how colleges use sports to manipulate their group proportions.
The prosecution called a former Georgetown tennis player, Jane. She was a really good player, top-ranked in Maryland. She went to this super-expensive private school. She had to practice for hours every day, which takes a lot of money.
I mean, think about it: coaching, tournaments, trainers, physical therapy, private school or home schooling, equipment… All those costs add up really, really fast.
And what did her family get for all that money? She wasn't going pro. But she did get recruited by lots of exclusive colleges, including Georgetown.
Then the prosecution called Meg Lysy, the Georgetown admissions officer. She said the tennis coach would give her transcripts and say, "These are my recruits." And she'd check their academic preparedness and say yes or no.
Sometimes, she doubted the qualifications of an athlete. But if they were good enough at tennis, she was willing to compromise. She says, "This player is going to change my team." And they might admit someone with lower academics because it would have such an impact.
She didn't even verify the tennis ability. She just relied on the coach's word. It all came down to what the coach wanted.
Would Jane have gotten into Georgetown without tennis? Probably not. Lysy admitted that tennis recruits had much lower grades and test scores than the typical Georgetown students. But, she said, student-athletes bring something special to the community. They bring talent, pride. Everyone wants the team to do well.
It's the same answer Harvard's Dean Fitzsimmons gave! But it really doesn't make any sense. Student athletes never spend any time in the community anyway! Why is Georgetown so happy to compromise its own standards for people who spend all their time on the court?
Well, what is special about a really good tennis player is that the only way to be a really good tennis player is to come from a wealthy family and live near a country club and have at least one parent with sufficient time on their hands to drive you all over the country for tournaments.
The first witness in the Khoury trial was a guy named Timothy Donovan. He was the go-between between Khoury and the Georgetown coach. He ran a consulting firm that got tennis players into elite schools. He charges thousands of dollars, and he gets big bonuses if he succeeds, up to $200,000.
On his website, he lists all the schools where his clients have been accepted. Harvard. Georgetown.
Harvard has a tennis team, just like Georgetown. But tennis teams are small. You need a sport with the same exclusivity but with more participants. Fencing, sailing, rowing… and then there is Women's Rugby.
There are thirty-three players on the Harvard women's rugby roster!
The sport is tailor-made for social engineering. The team is overwhelmingly white. They come from wealthy communities, fancy boarding schools, and their parents have enough money to fly them all over the world for matches and training.
In 2012, the Supreme Court heard the case of Fisher v. University of Texas. A student claimed she was denied admission because "her" spot was given to a minority student. Texas argued they needed a "critical mass" of minorities, and it couldn't achieve that with students like Fisher.
The justices immediately asked, how are you defining critical mass?
The University of Texas believed in it, but it didn't want to say what it was. The Chief Justice wanted to know, but they wouldn’t tell him! The school wouldn't specify what that number was, exactly, so the courts can't tell if it is constitutional.
The universities just couldn’t answer the question of the numbers behind their “critical mass” argument. And one Justice even joked that they should stop calling it a mass, and start calling it a cloud.
This case went to the heart of the constitutionality of affirmative action. And the brilliant lawyers for the leading education institutions just… shrugged. They didn’t want to have to take a stand on what the numbers should be because they weren’t really trying to get to a critical mass that would benefit the minority students involved.
In 2022, the Supreme Court heard Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. They ruled that race-based affirmative-action programs were unconstitutional.
And really, can you blame them?
The irony is, the game Harvard is playing with rugby is also affirmative action. But instead of helping underprivileged students with lower grades, it helps privileged students with lower grades. And universities weren't willing to defend *that* kind of affirmative action.
When the Supreme Court ruled against them, Harvard released an angry statement. They wanted a student body that represents multiple facets of human experience. That is really a joke about the special deal the college makes for the kids of alumni or the extraordinary lengths it goes to to ensure a healthy proportion of its student body has been properly prepared for the Harvard experience on the country-club playing fields of the United States.
If you don’t think that social engineering has quietly become one of the central activities of the American establishment, you haven’t been paying attention.