July 25, 2023

Tuesday, July 25, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

To read an article excerpted in this Roundup, click on its blue title. Each “blue” article is hyperlinked so you can read the whole article.

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Joe is always busy.

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Who would imagine that “Barbie” would exacerbate America’s gender hostilities!

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Will Israel remain a Democracy?

Here’s why we march against Netanyahu’s power grab: it’s a fight for Israel’s life as a democratic state.

‘There is a tremendous thirst to spend even a day or two in a different moral climate.’ Protesters in Jerusalem on 23 July 2023

There were many exhilarating moments during the days and nights of the march to Jerusalem. One of them occurred on Saturday morning, when a massive human wave, quivering with thousands of blue and white flags, slowly streamed down the hillside near Shoresh and intersected with the crowds waiting at Hemed Bridge. The two camps melded together; water bottles were given to the hot and weary walkers, along with slices of watermelon, ice pops and grapes. There was generosity, goodwill and heartfelt sharing. There was the rare understanding that each of us was composed of the many people who came to this place, who continued together up the Qastel hills to Jerusalem, sweltering in the extreme heat but with their souls uplifted.

The Jewish nation has experienced rifts and divisions: Sadducees and Pharisees, Hasidism and Misnagdim, and many other opposing factions. But what has been occurring in Israel these past few months is no longer on the same continuum. We do not yet have the words to adequately describe this turn of events, and that is why it is so frightening. It may transpire that it was the beginning of a process that will crumble – and possibly resolve – our society’s ossified, dangerous points. But for now it is bringing to the surface Israel’s secrets and lies, the cumulative historical offences, the lack of compassion, the injustices, all of which have become an intolerable dissonance that breeds mutual revulsion.

The resistance movement has also revealed how sophisticated were the mechanisms of self-deception, delusion and brainwashing in which we engaged so that, for 75 years, we could prevent all these hostilities from erupting. How we learned to hide them, chiefly from ourselves, and found ways to whitewash them, train them, domesticate them – and ourselves. How hollow the “unity” mantra that sated us for decades sounds today. How false the term “cohesion” now seems, when one side all but erases the worries, anxieties, values and wishes of the other.

We stand now, defenceless, against these grating lies that have burst forth into our exposed reality. The ground falls away beneath our feet. Great fear gnaws at us.

We have never, to this day, voiced such a trenchant acknowledgment: our existence here – an existence that, for all its flaws, is also wonderful, yearned-for, exceptional – is made possible thanks to the air supremacy guaranteed by a few hundred pilots. It is a frightening realisation. This simple, concrete fact of our reality is terrifying.

Yet rather than merely debating the legitimacy of the pilots’ decision to suspend their volunteer service in the armed forces, we ought to look elsewhere for a moment. We must look to the place where we admit that our military might – namely, our existence – depends largely on these few hundred people, and that we would therefore do well to strive for peace treaties with our enemy-neighbours as soon as possible. Otherwise, we risk another war. The truth that many of us have known for years is now in plain sight: this is vital to Israel’s security.

As if the awareness that has been dulled for so many years has suddenly been awakened, we now comprehend the responsibility – no, the culpability – of the self-proclaimed agents of Jewish history who brought about the state’s greatest disaster: the settlement enterprise.

This week, the fate of Israel as a democratic state will be determined. The hundreds of thousands of Israelis who left their homes under impossible circumstances did so in order to protest and sound the alarm bells, but also because they felt the need to live, however briefly, in a proper, functional, benevolent atmosphere. It is a need that should not be taken lightly. For decades, it was stolen from us. The state became a place of violence, vulgarity, pollution. The deception perpetrated by Simcha Rothman (member of the Knesset for the far-right Religious Zionist party), the justice minister, Yariv Levin, the security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Benjamin Netanyahu is, ultimately, just the artist’s signature in the corner of the big picture.

There is a tremendous thirst to spend even a day or two in a different moral climate. In a lucid reality. In a strong breeze of hope. How refreshing it was to see that torrent of people slowly pouring down the hillside outside Jerusalem, composed of hundreds of thousands of Israelis of all ethnicities and all ages, supporters of different political parties, people who founded – or whose foremothers and forefathers founded – the state, and who will absolutely not give up on their dream. Because they know that if that dream is distorted and vandalised, there will quite simply be no purpose to their lives.

• David Grossman is an Israeli author. This piece was translated by Jessica Cohen from an article originally published in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz. (The Guardian).

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The Depressing Truth about Admissions at America’s Elite Colleges.

1 out of 6 students have parents in the top 1 percent.

Study of Elite College Admissions Data Suggests Being Very Rich Is Its Own Qualification.

Harvard Yard.

Elite colleges have long been filled with the children of the richest families: At Ivy League schools, one in six students has parents in the top 1 percent.

A large new study, released Monday, shows that it has not been because these children had more impressive grades on average or took harder classes. They tended to have higher SAT scores and finely honed résumés, and applied at a higher rate — but they were overrepresented even after accounting for those things. For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, children from families in the top 1 percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, and those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in.

The study — by Opportunity Insights, a group of economists based at Harvard who study inequality — quantifies for the first time the extent to which being very rich is its own qualification in selective college admissions.

The analysis is based on federal records of college attendance and parental income taxes for nearly all college students from 1999 to 2015, and standardized test scores from 2001 to 2015. It focuses on the eight Ivy League universities, as well as Stanford, Duke, M.I.T. and the University of Chicago. It adds an extraordinary new data set: the detailed, anonymized internal admissions assessments of at least three of the 12 colleges, covering half a million applicants. (The researchers did not name the colleges that shared data or specify how many did because they promised them anonymity.)

The new data shows that among students with the same test scores, the colleges gave preference to the children of alumni and to recruited athletes, and gave children from private schools higher nonacademic ratings. The result is the clearest picture yet of how America’s elite colleges perpetuate the intergenerational transfer of wealth and opportunity.

Affirmative action for the rich

In a concurring opinion in the affirmative action case, Justice Neil Gorsuch addressed the practice of favoring the children of alumni and donors, which is also the subject of a new case. “While race-neutral on their face, too, these preferences undoubtedly benefit white and wealthy applicants the most,” he wrote.

The new paper did not include admissions rates by race because previous research had done so, the researchers said. They found that racial differences were not driving the results. When looking only at applicants of one race, for example, those from the highest-income families still had an advantage. Yet the top 1 percent is overwhelmingly white. Some analysts have proposed diversifying by class as a way to achieve more racial diversity without affirmative action.

The new data showed that other selective private colleges, like Northwestern, N.Y.U. and Notre Dame, had a similarly disproportionate share of children from rich families. Public flagship universities were much more equitable. At places like the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Virginia, applicants with high-income parents were no more likely to be admitted than lower-income applicants with comparable scores.

The researchers did a novel analysis to measure whether attending one of these colleges causes success later in life. They compared students who were wait-listed and got in, with those who didn’t and attended another college instead. Consistent with previous research, they found that attending an Ivy instead of one of the top nine public flagships did not meaningfully increase graduates’ income, on average. However, it did increase a student’s predicted chance of earning in the top 1 percent to 19 percent, from 12 percent.

For outcomes other than earnings, the effect was even larger — it nearly doubled the estimated chance of attending a top graduate school, and tripled the estimated chance of working at firms that are considered prestigious, like national news organizations and research hospitals.

To read the whole article, rather than this excerpted piece, click here. (The New York Times)

One more thing. In thinking about this issue, add in this information from David Leonhardt, also in The New York Times.

The new study, by Raj Chetty and David Deming of Harvard and John Friedman of Brown, demonstrates that the country’s most qualified high school students are indeed disproportionately affluent.

About 7 percent of the country’s very top students come from the top 1 percent of the income distribution. These students tend to have scored at least 1500 on the SAT (or 35 on the ACT), received top marks on Advanced Placement tests, earned almost all A’s in their high school classes, and often excelled in science fairs or other competitions.

Perhaps the most surprising pattern involves so-called legacy students, those who attend the same college that their parents did. At the elite colleges that the researchers studied, legacy students had stronger academic qualifications on average than nonlegacy students. Similarly, graduates of private high schools had stronger academic records on average than graduates of public high schools or Catholic schools.

These stellar academic backgrounds predict later success. Highly qualified affluent students tend to excel in college and afterward — which indicates that the professors and university officials who’ve reached out to me over the years have a point.

Yet they are also overlooking an important part of the story: Most of these colleges do not admit only the hyper-qualified affluent students; they also admit many other high-income students.

As I mentioned above, 7 percent of the country’s very best high school students come from the top 1 percent of the income distribution. But what proportion of students at elite colleges comes from the top 1 percent of the income distribution? Much more: 16 percent.

From one of the researchers, Raj Chetty, of the study referenced in both articles above - “The key point is that we don’t need to put a thumb on the scale in favor of the poor. We just need to take off the thumb that we — perhaps inadvertently — have on the scale in favor of the rich.”

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What Harvard is to one group of Americans, Phi Mu is to another.

No word here on whether this is happening in the Divine 9 at the HBCU too.

New members of Phi Mu en route to meeting with their sorority sisters last year at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Sorority rush at the University of Georgia kicks off in August, a lousy time to wear makeup.

“You need to do it in a way that’s appropriate in southern humidity or else you’re going to have orange rivers running down your face,” said Trisha Addicks. She recommends keeping a “rush bag” with deodorant, portable fan, water and face powder.

That’s the kind of practical advice Addicks gives clients of her Georgia-based sorority-consulting firm, It’s All Greek to Me. Showing up in Dr. Martens combat boots, as one client asked about, might not be putting your best foot forward in some sorority circles, she said: “During rush, you’re not going to be confident if you’re wearing them, and everybody else is wearing espadrilles.”

Addicks offers a $600 seminar for women and their mothers to learn the basics about getting into a sorority; $3,500 buys unlimited access to sorority mentors who advise aspirants through every step. She is part of an industry emerging in recent years that sells tips and emotional support to women who want to avoid missteps that threaten first impressions. Sorority consultants cover such topics as what to wear, how to act, what to say and the wisdom of scrubbing potentially off-putting social media posts.

Emma Kelley, a recent graduate, said hiring Addicks was worth it. Otherwise, she risked entering blind to the arcane rituals, traditions and unspoken rules of Greek life. “You have to be trendy but not too trendy, modest but not too modest, fit in but be unique,” said Kelley, who joined the University of Georgia’s Delta Zeta sorority. The trick, she said, is “blending in and standing out.”

Stacia Damron, founder and CEO of Hiking in Heels.

Getting into sororities has become nearly as competitive as acceptance to top universities. Applicants are asked to write essays, give their grade-point average and report whether they did volunteer work or played high-school sports. Women submit application packets with as many as 30 letters of recommendation, said Stacia Damron, owner of Hiking in High Heels in Texas. Some sororities require that applicants record video responses to their questions. “My boyfriend went to Stanford, and he said this is more complicated than getting a Stanford M.B.A.,” she said.

Damron tells clients that they need a social-media presence but warns that sorority members will scour a recruit’s posts. She suggests that women erase images of themselves in very skimpy outfits or with alcohol. Instead, they should pile up posts about family, friends, hobbies and volunteer work. “It’s about telling a story to help the sororities get to know you,” said Damron. Her fees run as high as $4,000 for on-call service during rush.

Sorority consultant Trisha Addicks.

Leighton Newberry, owner of Recruitment Ready in Atlanta, said she spends a lot of time prepping young women for conversation. All the hours young people spend texting and communicating over social media has left many inexperienced with face-to-face chitchat, she said. Newberry, who graduated from Auburn University in 2019, advises her clients to make eye contact and stay engaged with new acquaintances during rush season’s many social events. She suggests asking questions: Where are you from? Why did you pick this school to attend?

Newberry has a la carte sessions that cost $150 for video calls and $175 for in-person meetings. She also sells the Bid Day Bundle for $1,000. That includes three one-on-one sessions and assistance writing résumés and cover letters, as well as styling tips. She also gives frank talk about disappointment.

“You’re not going to get what you want all the time,” Newberry said. “These are life skills that can carry with them for years to come. It’s not just about getting into one sorority.” 

Last year, 125,000 women sought a spot in sororities at the 500 campuses that provide data to the National Panhellenic Conference, and between a quarter and a fifth of them either quit or didn’t get accepted, according to Dani Weatherford, chief executive of the National Panhellenic Conference, a trade group that represents sororities. Generally, sororities conduct four rounds of meetings with applicants and winnow the group after each round.

The $2,000 Fabulous and Chic package from Greek Chic in Manhattan provides four sessions on applications, social media and wardrobe, along with ’round-the-clock counseling during rush week. Owner Lorie Stefanelli recalled being at a rooftop concert when she got a call from a distraught client at the University of Texas, Austin. The young woman, in tears, had successfully passed several rounds but felt too exhausted to keep going. Stefanelli said she left the concert to soothe her client, telling her she was doing a great job and encouraging her to continue.

Shannon Rust had to bounce back from a few rejections after leaving home in Stamford, Conn., to attend the University of Georgia last year. She had known little about sororities, and her roommate’s mother suggested Addicks, of It’s All Greek to Me. Shannon’s mother, Janine Rust, said she first thought that the idea of paying for a sorority consultant was crazy. But she went ahead and hired Addicks.

Rust said that after Shannon called her to say she had been cut from several sororities, she was more upset than her daughter was. “How could they not want my kid,” Rust recalled thinking. Then she picked up the phone and got consoled by Addicks.

“Having someone to be able to call 24/7 to talk me off the ledge was immeasurable,” Rust said. (WSJ).

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Why not feed all the children?

My second grade teacher in Manhattan knew some of the children were hungry. She made oatmeal each day. We all ate. Stella Rose.

A radical idea: Just give kids lunch.

Students have lunch in the cafeteria at Webster Elementary in Minneapolis in October 2019.

Consider the remarkable concept of “lunch debt,” with which a student is burdened when their parents haven’t been able to put enough money into their school account. When they get to the front of the line in the cafeteria, they might be told that because of their debt, they can have only a jelly sandwich (no hot meal for you, Oliver Twist). In some cases, kids have been forced to wear stamps or wristbands so staff (and their peers) know who they are.

How should we solve this problem? One option would be to take the already complex system through which children in public schools are fed and layer more complexity on top of it. Set up a few new means-tested programs, create funding streams that school districts can apply for, offer some grants.

Or we could just give every kid lunch.

And breakfast too, for those who want it. Imagine: Children just walking into the cafeteria and getting fed. No accounts that parents have to keep up, no time spent assessing families’ incomes or processing payments or running down parents who haven’t paid — no “lunch shaming” — none of that. Kids just eat.

That’s what Michigan has now done: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has signed an education bill providing free meals for every public school student. Michigan is now the seventh state to offer this benefit, joining California, Colorado, Minnesota, Maine, New Mexico and Vermont.

Those are all blue states, and this is certainly something liberals are inclined to favor, because it involves a kind of nurturing-through-benefits that liberals love. But it also serves to advance a broader goal that liberals ought to pay more attention to: making government simultaneously more ambitious and simpler.

Which is why every Democrat should advocate it, and make Republicans who disagree explain why they don’t think we should just feed all the children so they can concentrate on learning.

At the moment, we have a three-tier system for lunch in public schools. Kids whose family income is below 130 percent of the poverty line (or $39,000 for a family of four) get free meals; those with an income up to 185 percent of poverty (or $55,500) get reduced-price meals, and everyone else pays full price. Families usually have to apply to receive such assistance, which creates a barrier for those who can’t or don’t want to deal with the paperwork. Then, eligibility has to be verified and tracked, and in the cafeteria itself, payments have to be processed. Many school districts have to employ full-time staff just to administer the system.

We had universal free school meals from 2020 to 2022; as part of pandemic relief, Congress provided funds to make all school meals free to any student who wanted them. The Biden administration and many Democrats wanted to extend the program, but Republicans resisted, and it expired.

If you’re a parent, you might remember what happened when schools no longer had to determine eligibility. Not only were many more students eligible for meals, including those who had trouble paying before, but the removal of the layers of bureaucracy just made everything easier. “If you take away that paperwork, it’s such a benefit to families and students. And it also speeds up the lunch line,” says Diane Pratt-Heavner of the School Nutrition Association.

We usually associate critiques of bureaucracy and the complexity of government programs with conservatives, who often argue that government is inherently cumbersome and inefficient. In some cases they’re right — but it’s liberals who have the greatest interest in making government work better. Though some policy areas are unavoidably complicated (health care, for instance), liberals should be on the lookout for places where things can be simplified, because it helps more people and improves the government’s image.

It would be hard to find a better opportunity than universal school meals. Sure, it isn’t cheap, but we’re already spending billions of dollars on feeding kids in school, because we agree that it’s a good thing to do (and the poorest districts are already eligible for universal meals under a program called the Community Eligibility Provision). We just have to decide to feed all children, and do it in the least bureaucratic way possible.

And yes, that means that kids whose parents can afford to buy their meals will get them at no charge. But we aren’t setting up income-assessment and payment systems for having gym class or getting a locker. Every public school student gets those benefits, just as they could get free meals.

There is a universal school meals bill in Congress sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), but it has never gone anywhere. Yet this should not be something only the most progressive Democrats favor.

For now, it’s only happening in those seven states (though universal school meal bills have been introduced in two dozen others). But the federal government already subsidizes school breakfast and lunch in every state, and it can boost that subsidy to give every child free meals. “It is wonderful to see” these states offer universal meals, Pratt-Heavner told me, “but a child’s nutritional needs are the same whether they’re living in Michigan or Mississippi. This is a federal program, and we need a federal solution.”

The next step is for Democrats to start advocating it on a national level. They can frame it as help for struggling families, support for academic achievement, or eliminating needless government bureaucracy. But the message couldn’t be simpler: Just give kids lunch. You’d be hard-pressed to find an easier position to advocate than that. (Paul Waldman, The Washington Post).

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FYI. The Strikes go on.

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