Zero Sum Game

CNN and Harvard celebrate, as an unambiguous good, a report showing a record high percentage of women admitted to the freshman class at Harvard. Unmentioned is the fact that you can only raise the percentage of one group by reducing another . . .

Harvard officials have been trying to raise the number of women on campus for decades.
William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid, said the ratio of men to women was 4-to-1 when he arrived in the 1960s.
“This is a day we have been hoping for a very, very long time,” he said.
The number of women did not set the only record. Asian-Americans made up the largest percentage yet of accepted applicants, at 18.9 percent. The percentage of blacks was also the highest ever, 10.3 percent, as was the percentage of Latinos, 9.5 percent.

Now, there’s always a hornet’s nest around the question of how much “trying” is acceptable – certainly, if women were 10% of the incoming class, you’d think something was wrong – but what’s revealing here is the idea that there is no cost whatsoever to persistently straining to reduce the admission of men. A little more agonizing, at least, would be appropriate. But then, William R. Fitzsimmons presumably has his college degree already. What should he care?