Some Asian American college students consider, opposite to the dominant narrative within the court docket case, that they’ve benefited from affirmative motion. Proof launched in court docket confirmed that Harvard typically favored sure Asian American candidates over others. As an illustration, candidates with households from Nepal, Tibet or Vietnam, amongst different nations, have been described with phrases like “deserving” and “Tug for BG,” an abbreviation for background.
“I do consider I used to be a beneficiary,” stated Hans Bach-Nguyen, a Harvard sophomore from Camarillo, in Southern California. He stated he was unsure till he requested his admissions file and located that one of many two reader feedback in it involved his Vietnamese heritage.
He was completely satisfied, he stated, to be acknowledged as a member of an underrepresented minority in greater schooling. However he questioned whether or not he was totally deserving. His mother and father got here to the USA as refugees at round his age, and received school levels at state universities.
“I believe my guilt comes from that I didn’t develop up low-income,” he stated.
Echoing a standard criticism of the college, he famous that many Harvard college students, “even when they’re from minority backgrounds, are from financially steady or extra prosperous households.”
In California, affirmative motion has been banned since 1996, besides, a couple of Asian American college students there appeared suspicious of what they considered a secretive admissions course of.