<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>s17n</author><text>The point is that legacy admissions have always been an egregious injustice.  One effect of affirmative action was to (partially and imperfectly) ameliorate the admissions situation.  Now that&amp;#x27;s gone.&lt;p&gt;As far as the freedom of association goes, that&amp;#x27;s not an argument in favor of legacy admissions but it is possibly an argument that the government should stay out of it.  Given the central role that universities play in our society, and the fact that they depend on government support, I think it&amp;#x27;s a complicated question.  Ultimately I think it&amp;#x27;s also an uninteresting question - the important thing is building a societal consensus legacy admissions are wrong and should end.</text><parent_chain><item><author>dionidium</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I just don&amp;#x27;t see this. In our society we believe it to be illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race. We believe that to be a &lt;i&gt;special&lt;/i&gt; kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, and that it therefore clears the very high bar required for limiting freedom of association. That is what is at issue in the case of affirmative action, the elimination of which was not a broad referendum on the right to form elite social clubs.</text></item><item><author>julienchastang</author><text>Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of white applicants admitted to Harvard between 2014-19 fell into one or more of these categories. Nearly three quarters of them would have been rejected if they had been subjected to the same standards as other white applicants.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wsj.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;end-college-legacy-preferences-harvard-sffa-racce-affirmative-action-13e90e30&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wsj.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;end-college-legacy-preferences-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt</title><url>https://triblive.com/news/children-relatives-of-alumni-no-longer-have-admissions-edge-at-carnegie-mellon-pitt/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>MisterBastahrd</author><text>We do not live in a perfect world.&lt;p&gt;Instead, we live in a world where a collection of individuals has had the fruits of their labor stolen from them for most of the past 400 years, served in wars where promises were made and not kept upon their return, and are still being discriminated against in representative democracy.&lt;p&gt;And when someone enumerates all the reasons that these people have been harmed, financially, spiritually, democratically, and physically... the people who are against attempts to rectify the situation given the tools available also have nothing but &amp;quot;fairness&amp;quot; to fall back on when attempting to justify their positions, because they&amp;#x27;d rather sweep it under the rug and pretend like it&amp;#x27;s something that we should never address.</text><parent_chain><item><author>dionidium</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I just don&amp;#x27;t see this. In our society we believe it to be illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race. We believe that to be a &lt;i&gt;special&lt;/i&gt; kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, and that it therefore clears the very high bar required for limiting freedom of association. That is what is at issue in the case of affirmative action, the elimination of which was not a broad referendum on the right to form elite social clubs.</text></item><item><author>julienchastang</author><text>Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of white applicants admitted to Harvard between 2014-19 fell into one or more of these categories. Nearly three quarters of them would have been rejected if they had been subjected to the same standards as other white applicants.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wsj.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;end-college-legacy-preferences-harvard-sffa-racce-affirmative-action-13e90e30&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wsj.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;end-college-legacy-preferences-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt</title><url>https://triblive.com/news/children-relatives-of-alumni-no-longer-have-admissions-edge-at-carnegie-mellon-pitt/</url></story>