Columbia Law School Posts, then Retracts, Video Statement Requirement for Applicants

Aaron Sibarium reports for the Free Beacon:

"All applicants will be required to submit a short video, no longer than 90 seconds, addressing a question chosen at random," the school's admissions page said Monday morning. "The video statement will allow applicants to provide the Admissions Committee with additional insight into their personal strengths."

Critics slammed the move as a thinly veiled attempt to defy the Supreme Court's ruling and practice affirmative action by other means, using appearance as a proxy for race. Columbia's decision "has all the hallmarks of a willful effort to evade the requirements of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act," said Edward Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, the plaintiffs in the June case that outlawed affirmative action. "What is a 90-second video supposed to legitimately convey that a written statement could not?"

Reached for comment by the Washington Free Beacon, however, a spokesman for the law school said it had all been a misunderstanding and, by 6:00 PM Monday evening, Columbia had scrubbed the language from its website.

Comments

[Brett Bellmore]

It's pretty pathetic that they actually thought they'd be able to get away with something that transparent. I'd have thought they'd have been at least a tiny bit more subtle.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Makes me wonder if the dummies being in positions of authority like this is just further evidence of how bad Affirmative Action is.

[Bored Lawyer]

We are talking about administrators at a law school. In my experience, not the brightest people.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

What about faculty members at a law school?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Correct me if I am wrong Brett, but wasn't there some ruling or something that law schools couldn't ask for photos of applicants anymore because THAT was racially discriminative?

How is this different?

And then, as it is a random and unannounced question, not only is an equally difficult question asked to each student but how is this not a slam dunk ADA complaint? I can think of a half dozen disabilities that wouldn't interfere with the practice of law -- if the person knew the structure (e.g. rules of court, etc) -- but this is like asking someone to be able to practice NIGERIAN law without warning.

I was in Extem competitions when I was in high school -- they told you where the topics would come from (the prior 3 months of Time, Newsweek, or US News & World Report, all of which were print copies back then) AND you had 15 minutes to prepare.

90 seconds on a random topic -- I wonder how many lawyers could deal with that...

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, at 24 frames per second, and 90 seconds, it's over two thousand times worse. That's how it's different.

[John F. Carr]

Only seventy-five times worse if you follow the conversion ratio in Sentencing Guidelines §2G2.2 application note 6(b)(ii). One dirty video, any length not substantially over five minutes long, is as bad as 75 dirty pictures.

[David Nieporent]

Correct me if I am wrong

We try. All the time. It never takes.

Maybe you should just try being less wrong on your own?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Could you imagine the screening room in Columbia for those?

A bunch of self righteous liberal Whites watching those videos and passing over all the smart well speaking, smart kids and deliberately picking the dumb barely literate government school failures, then smugly patting themselves on the back for fulfilling their Noble Mission of Diversity?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Leftists, not liberals....

[Drewski]

"Self-righteous" is hyphenated and should be followed by a comma. You said "smart" twice; the first should be followed with a comma. "Dumb" should be followed with a comma. "Barely-literate" is hyphenated. "Noble," "mission," and "diversity" should not be capitalized. Your predicate is missing a verb.

Yet you have opinions on who is well-spoken and who is barely-literate. Huh.

[Dr. Ed 2]

A lot of that depends on which style manual you use, and smart *can* be used twice because the first use modifies another adjective. Awkward is not always grammatically incorrect, and rules regarding punctuation and capitalization vary wildly between manuals.

We don't even have agreement between subject and verb anymore, it used to be that both had to be singular *or* both had to be plural.

[Bob from Ohio]

Elle Woods hardest hit.

[TwelveInchPianist]

You win the internet.

[Bored Lawyer]

It was a mostly peaceful video statement requirement, wasn't it?

[ducksalad]

Less than 20 years ago I imagine the comment section on Daily Kos would be 100% certain that the purpose of the video would be to keep out blacks. Now the comment section at Reason is 100% certain that it's used to keep out whites and Asians.

I understand that you don't trust Columbia, and also that timing of this right after the SC decision on affirmative action is suspicious.

However, oral communication ability is not an inherently invalid thing to look at in university admissions. Rice used to require an in-person interview with alumni living near the applicant.

If the lawyers here say it's not important for law school, and thus not worth the risk of misuse, I'll take your word for it. But I'd hope that programs for acting, classroom teaching, etc would want an audition video.

[Bored Lawyer]

You did read the post, right? This is Columbia Law School (my alma mater), not the Theatre School. And they required a video not longer than 90-seconds, not a dramatic reading of a scene from Hamlet or Death of a Salesman.

If the lawyers here say it’s not important for law school, and thus not worth the risk of misuse, I’ll take your word for it.

Given that law schools, including Columbia, have NEVER had any such requirement, it's a safe bet that it's not important.

[David Bernstein]

Daily Kos readership was living on the wrong planet if they thought that 20 years ago Columbia law school was affirmatively seeking ways to exclude black students. The opposite would have been true even 50 years ago.

[ducksalad]

I fully agree that the Daily Kos would’ve been wrong 20 years ago.

I’m suggesting something less than 100% certainty is appropriate today. Ivy League schools have certainly earned some distrust on this issue; you’ve given us plenty of evidence on that.

However, I’ve also worked on admissions requirements and sometimes a test is just test, an essay is just an essay, etc. We don’t use videos for admission to engineering school but videos are required at various points to progress toward graduations.

You aren’t going to be able to keep the students’ (apparent) race secret throughout their college career, and frankly, if we were planning to do massive racial discrimination, in either direction, admission is just one of many opportunities.

[David Bernstein]

You may be right, but a 90 second video is really a very, very awkward way of trying to judge someone, and really unfair, too. If your dad is a video producer you will have a huge advantage over someone just having his friend hold up a cell phone.

[ducksalad]

Agreed that a canned video on a question selected by the applicant is of limited value for the things you're ostensibly trying to assess for law school. But on the unfairness issue, well, it's not worse than the essays. Some poor honest suckers actually write their own, others have a whole editorial staff assisting them.

What I think is valuable, despite revealing the race, is a brief live Zoom session. Obviously not practical for mass screening but maybe for the 2nd round of narrowing down. At the graduate and professional hiring level, I can tell you that the Zoom makes it very obvious who wrote their own essays, who had help, and who farmed out the job to a professional.

[Magister]

I know! You could have everyone use the cat filter some lawyer couldn't turn off during a court appearance.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/09/us/cat-filter-lawyer-zoom-court-trnd/index.html

Also, transform everyone's voices into a weird robot voice or a chipmunk, just because it would be hilarious.

[BadLib]

A 90 second video is an "elevator pitch" and it's important to be able to communicate key ideas and arguments quickly and clearly so I think there could be some legitimate value in seeing if the applicant has such skills. Given two otherwise identical applicants, the one with such skills is likely to be more successful both in school and in their career.

It is also somewhat harder to smoothly present yourself in a video when you're presenting something prepared by others whereas an essay can be completely written and edited by others so there could be some legitimate value in such videos.

Not that I think, given the timing and the quick retraction, this iteration of the requirement had any purpose except to work around restrictions on affirmative action.

[Mr. Bumble]

Are they applying to law school or auditioning for CNN or Judge Judy?

[BadLib]

The ability to communicate verbally effectively is a useful skill in many fields and is also helpful to students in an education setting.

A video of this sort may not be a great way to evaluate the presentation skills of an applicant but it's likely better than nothing.

Do you want to hire a lawyer who can't communicate with you efficiently and effectively when you're paying them by the hour?

Do you want a lawyer defending you who can't communicate efficiently and effectively with witnesses, juries, judges, and opposing counsel?

If such a video was being requested for job applicants assembling widgets on an assembly line I would probably fail to see the purpose - but (future) lawyers are not assembling widgets on an assembly line.

[damikesc]

Seems weird that it was not a needed thing BEFORE affirmative action was ruled unconstitutional.

The timing makes the policy exceedingly difficult to defend. And, note, they did not try to do so.

[Gasman]

Such a performance is a teachable skill. If it has any value as judged by law schools, and will get their graduates better jobs, then where is the class within the curriculum that hones this skill for all the students.
No classes, required or elective? then it is evidently declared unimportant to the curriculum committee, and the dean of the school.

[bernard11]

a test is just test, an essay is just an essay, etc.

Also, a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.

[Zennyfan]

Will you accept the opinion of a retired lawyer? Such a recording, especially one of only 90 seconds, won’t provide any useful admissions data except the applicant’s race (and perhaps “gender” status). Law schools once used criteria such as the LSAT and undergrad grades to determine admissions, but that ship has sailed on the Good Ship Diversity.

[Vryedni]

[delete]

[Vryedni]

[delete]

[Frank Drackman]

Barry Hussein Osama was ahead of his time, here's his Columbia video from 1981
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgYIBG0fYq4

Frank

[SomeGuy 2]

Columbia may have backed down but it's going to happen eventually. It's going to be a wild time when somebody, digitally or with makeup, pretends to be black to get an admission they otherwise would not have. Not even sure what the University could do about this-- allegedly, they're not considering race, right? So surely that didn't make a difference, it's not like the applicant committed fraud.

[ducksalad]

You might have seen that survey claiming some large fraction, like a quarter, of students lied about their race on their applications. I don't believe it. The reason is that we'd have noticed that big a difference when the freshmen showed up. (Or, if you want to indulge in a happy thought, a quarter of them did lie but it didn't change the stats because we actually aren't using race as much as everyone thinks.)

Can't speak for what an Ivy League school would do in a case like you describe, but I can tell you what my institution would probably do: absolutely nothing. Wouldn't open that can of worms with a twenty foot pole held by a satellite-controlled robot.

[David Nieporent]

I saw Soul Man, so I know how it would turn out.

[Magister]

But Tropic Thunder turned out OK for Kirk Lazarus.

[Frank Drackman]

Thats so sad you wasted part of your life watching that movie.
It's OK, I watched "Watermelon Man" not much better.

[Ed Grinberg]

https://reason.com/volokh/2023/07/08/if-an-applicant-didnt-check-a-race-box-harvard-would-assign-a-race-anyway/?comments=true#comment-10144903
I bet the "enlightened" "liberals" running Columbia Law School wish we had this system. Things would be so much simpler / easier! They wouldn't have to go to all this trouble, trying to figure out the applicant's ethnic / racial background without asking about it (because doing so is now illegal!).

[John F. Carr]

I recall hearing that in some places, but not in the USA, it was customary to include a headshot with your CV when applying for a job. Not in the USA in part because of fear of allegations of discrimination and in part because of fear of actual discrimination (depending on whether you're the employer or the applicant).

[Longtobefree]

Photos with your resume went away in the US in the seventies, because racism.
To quote those great philosophers Mick Jagger / Keith Richards / Andrew Oldham:
"It is the evening of the day
I sit and watch the children play
Doin' things I used to do, they think are new"

[Dr. Ed 2]

John -- I came across some of my dad's resumes from circa 1960 -- back then you apparently had to go to a print shop for them -- and there was his picture on the top -- and he mentioned his religion, and that he was married.

[Sims]

How many times in recent years have we seen institutions that were considered unassailably adult reveal themselves to be run by utter clowns?

[mydisplayname]

Run by clowns, yes... greedy, fiscally irresponsible clowns detached from reality.

The old money at many institutions is arhritic and, despite the protests I'm certain to hear, the internal (and often well-concealed) admissions process at the "best" universities is actually a process of obtaining the student mix which results in the greatest cash flow for the organization: non-profit institutions are quite profit oriented! Selecting well-subsidized students is critical to the process, as is an administrative ability to convince faculty, donors, and even admissions personnel that their opinions are a vital part of the process.

It is rational. In my own business, I would prefer a customer who is fully taxpayer-subsidized, able to pay on a lump-sum basis, over a customer who must obtain a competitive loan disbursed to my business over time -- or worse, a customer who must dip into family funds which would otherwise be future donations.

[hoppy025]

I went to a similarly ranked school, and the affirmative action admits were very obviously inferior students. I thought most of the black girls in my class should have been working at McDonald's

[Gasman]

Med school university of Missouri in 1990. Four AA in my class, each with at least one masters degree to their name, and three flunked out in the first semester. Two even failed the class in which they held a masters degree.

[hoppy025]

Not surprising. AA permeates at every level, so their masters degrees were likely undeserved as well.

[Dr. Ed 2]

That was when you could flunk them -- now you can't...

[Bored Lawyer]

Off topic. I just read the new Trump indictment, for l'affaire January 6th.
My first impression is that while it paints a picture of a very bad man, the legal theories are weak. The prosecutor is straining to fit Trump's mendacity into federal statutes. For example, conspiracy to defraud the United States. I don't see how that can be squared with the holding in the Bridgegate case, U.S. v. Kelly (2019), here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-1059_e2p3.pdf

[hoppy025]

What he's trying to do is get a trial before a D.C. jury, which will probably be composed of 4 semi-retarded blacks, 3 slightly brighter blacks, but still low IQ by white standards, 3 vegan lefty whites, and 2 amnestied Mexicans.

[Bored Lawyer]

Motions to dismiss are decided by a judge. The DC judges are pretty straight.
IMO, it's a big risk for the prosecutor. Suppose a judge throws out even one of the four counts, based on a Supreme Court decision in 2019 (which was by Kagan, for a unanimous court). The prosecutor then looks like a fool, and involved in gross overreach.

[hoppy025]

Is it a big risk? The lefty judges have shown themselves to act in bad faith when they support the cause. Look at this degenerate:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/01/politics/judge-tanya-chutkan-trump-indictment/index.html

[Dr. Ed 2]

Bored, it's going to have to GO to SCOTUS and (a) how long will that take and (b) can the trial be stopped until then?

[Bored Lawyer]

No first it goes to the district court, then the Court of Appeals, the SCOTUS. They are going to move to dismiss at least some counts of the indictment.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I know that -- but doubt much luck on district or circuit level...

[Social Justice is neither]

And between now and then the marxist media will assume and portray guilt in every mention of him in order to sway voters against him. The process and the smear is the point, just another example of Democrats utilizing lawfare and the big lie.

[David Nieporent]

I fail to understand your reasoning here. The Bridgegate decision turned on the definition of "property." Nothing in the first count of the indictment, which is based on a violation of 18 USC 371, has anything to do with property.

And I'm not clear why successfully convicting Donald Trump on 3 or 4 counts would make the prosecutor look bad, anyway.

[Sarcastr0]

Not sure the statute says what you think it says, BL:

"18 U.S.C. 371 defines conspiracy to commit an offense or defraud the United States, stating, “If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof… and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”

[Bored Lawyer]

The indictment expressly states that it is charging a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. So what's your point?

[Sarcastr0]

The indictment cites 18 U.S.C. 371. You got it’s name right, but it’s actual language is broader. As I quoted. You going to stand on 'but that's the statute's name??' Be a better lawyer than that.

The crimes specified in the indictment as underlying the conspiracy are clearly not fraud.

[Bored Lawyer]

Once again, you beclown yourself. You clearly did not bother to read the indictment. That's what a "better lawyer" does -- read the actual charges.
The statute's language is broader, but the indictment's isn't. An indictment can, and often does, charge only a subset of what a statute criminalizes. Not a shock, since a statute is meant to apply to many cases, while an indictment reflects one set of charges against one defendant (or defendants).
The indictment charges conspiracy to defraud the United States. That the same statute criminalizes other conspiracies is a red herring. Worthy of you.

[David Nieporent]

No, you're just wrong here. The name of the statute is conspiracy to defraud the U.S. The indictment does not allege a scheme to defraud the U.S. of property. Read the whole charge, not just the caption. It's long — paragraphs 5-124 — but it does not allege anything like what you're claiming, but does in fact allege "other conspiracies," which are therefore not a red herring.

[Dr. Ed 2]

We are spiraling into a shooting civil war!

[Noscitur a sociis]

If you’re feeling froggy, Dr. Ed, feel free to jump.

[Dr. Ed 2]

To where?

[hoppy025]

I hope so.

[David Nieporent]

Stop masturbating to the notions of killing people you don't like.

[Vryedni]

Why do you let your fans defile your comment threads, David? Between the usual suspects broadcasting their Stormfront-quality racism, and Dr. Ed wishcasting his bloodlust so hard he can barely keep it in his pants, they aren’t exactly making you look good.