Can you copy them? NYTimes on ScAlito and Concerned Alumni of Princeton
by Armando
Sat Nov 26, 2005 at 01:15:43 PM PDT
The NYTimes covers the Alito connection to the extreme right wing group Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP):
In the fall of 1985, Concerned Alumni of Princeton was entering a crisis.
The group, whose members at the time included the Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr., had been founded in 1972 by alumni upset that Princeton had recently begun admitting women. It published a magazine, Prospect, which persistently accused the administration of taking a permissive approach to student life, of promoting birth control and paying for abortions, and of diluting the explicitly Christian character of the school.
As Princeton admitted a growing number of minority students, Concerned Alumni charged repeatedly that the administration was lowering admission standards, undermining the university's distinctive traditions and admitting too few children of alumni. "Currently alumni children comprise 14 percent of each entering class, compared with an 11 percent quota for blacks and Hispanics," the group wrote in a 1985 fund-raising letter, which was sent to all Princeton graduates.
By the mid-1980's, however, Princeton students and recent alumni were increasingly finding such statements anachronistic or worse. "Is the issue the percentage of alumni children admitted or the percentage of minorities?" Jonathan Morgan, a conservative undergraduate working with the group, asked its board members that fall in an internal memorandum. "I don't see the relevance in comparing the two, except in a racist context (i.e. why do we let in so many minorities and not alumni children?)," he continued.
However, in 1985, Sam Alito was bragging to Ed Meese about his connection to CAP:
[I]n an application for a promotion in the Reagan administration in the fall of 1985, Judge Alito was asked to provide information about his "philosophical commitment " to administration policies and listed his membership in Concerned Alumni.
When the White House disclosed the application this month, liberal groups opposed to his nomination pounced on the connection. "The question for senators to consider and to ask is why Samuel Alito would brag about his membership in an organization known for its fervent hostility to the inclusion of women and minorities at Princeton?" asked Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way.
The funny thing is CAP was beyond the pale even for Bill Frist:
The university's administration did not appreciate the accusations. In 1975, an alumni panel that included Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the current Republican leader and a 1974 Princeton graduate, concluded that Concerned Alumni had "presented a distorted, narrow and hostile view of the university that cannot help but have misinformed and even alarmed many alumni" and "undoubtedly generated adverse national publicity."
Mr. Frist could not be reached for comment.
When Frist has a problem with you being too extreme, that tells you something.
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