Terrible Precedents

The Supreme Court has had a busy week...

One of my few and most distinct memories from high school was standing in the post office where seniors, myself included, were checking the mail to see if college admissions letters had arrived. I was nervous and excited. I wanted to go to NYU and pursue technical theater (I was 17) but had also applied to Brown, Yale, and Harvard. The air was thick with tension as we turned the combination dials back and forth until we heard that satisfying click and opened the small doors to our individual mailboxes.

In mine there was a neat stack of slender letters. I had belabored under the misapprehension that acceptances would come in a big thick envelope while rejections would arrive in slender envelopes because it doesn’t take much paper to tell you that you don’t have the right stuff for any given institution. When I saw that stack, I assumed I was dealing with a worst-case scenario and immediately started wondering what I would do upon graduation and what a disappointment I would be to my family.

The first letter I opened, from Brown, was a rejection, and I was even more deflated because that had been my second choice. But then, the other letters bore excellent news. As I opened the final letter, from Yale, I exhaled. Even if I didn’t yet know where, I would be going to college which was compulsory in my family.

Nearby, there was a young white man, also opening his letters. He had the ruddy, entitled demeanor of a lacrosse player probably because he was a lacrosse player and when he heard me sharing my news with another classmate, his face rearranged itself with disgust and he told me I was only going to a good school because of affirmative action. He was wealthy, probably had a trust fund, would absolutely go to college somewhere, but because I had gotten into the schools he preferred, he was profoundly aggrieved. As an aside, isn’t it interesting who we consider fragile and who we don’t?