SHANNON KELLY
Perspectives Editor
College admissions requirements are ridiculous. Everyone has heard the stories about the straight-A-athlete-of-the-year-perfect-SATs-philanthropist-extraordinaires getting turned down from schools that they were supposedly over-qualified to attend. Involved in every club, Advanced Placement class, sports team and charity wasn’t enough to win the bid. There was just that little something missing from his or her resume. In Yale’s case, that perfect-on-paper student might have made the cut had he gotten his act together. He should have shaped up, dropped one of those APs, spent a little less volunteer time playing bingo with old people, and focused his time and attention on the Taliban.
Sayed Rashmatulla Hashemi figured it out. He didn’t waste any time building the typical college-application resume — he didn’t have to. Once Yale admissions saw “deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban,” nothing else mattered and Hashemi was accepted. After viewing countless applications boasting 4.5 GPAs, and the same boring 1600 SATs, a Taliban spokesman was the refreshing light — something different; good for diversity on campus. They really struck gold didn’t they?
Yale thinks so. Last month, the former dean of admissions told The New York Times about their lucky catch saying they had “another foreigner of Rahmatullah’s caliber apply for special student status,” but they “lost him to Harvard.” Maybe Harvard have rejected Hashemi for an actual terrorist.
Hashemi said he is thankful for his admittance. “In some ways I’m the luckiest person in the world,” he told The New York Times Magazine. “I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale.”
Although he is now reportedly disaffiliated with the oppressive and brutal Afghan Taliban, fewer than five years ago, he was moving up the ranks in a group that tortured people and promoted violence. If guilty by association isn’t enough to contest his admittance, then there are other arguments against it.
Hashemi didn’t take the SATs and has a fourth grade formal education.
Yale administrators have received criticism for their decision to admit an unqualified ex-Taliban ambassador and responded to the university’s newspaper saying: “This is our burden to tend to, and there is no better way to develop a clearer understanding of our differences and similarities to the Afghani people than to invite Hashemi to learn in our system. Despite our anxieties, we must maintain the energy and tolerance to seek the origins of other ideologies. If Hashemi’s voice were absent from University discourse, we would risk crippling our perception of today’s world.”
This isn’t just Yale’s burden to tend because it affects people beyond the university. Most importantly, there are more efficient and appropriate ways of developing an understanding of the Afghani people. Among the thousands of applicants, there must be some Afghani people more qualified than the Taliban man. They should admit an Afghani person who can share with his fellow students examples of the cruel, oppressive regime. It’s a regime that, among other things, prevented women from working in public places, stoned gay people, and exterminated minority groups, such as the Hazaras of whom the Taliban killed more than 15,000 and enslaved their women. Instead, they chose to welcome a person who devoted much of his life as an enthusiast for such awful governing tactics and intense oppression.
Yale’s assertion that a lack of Taliban-related diversity would be “crippling to our perception of today’s world,” is ludicrous. Not admitting people based on actual merit and instead embracing an unqualified person because of their “diversity” plan is crippling. Turning down thousands of worthy applicants who would contribute diverse thoughts and opinions regardless of their ethnicity or affiliations is crippling.
03-23-2006