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We Love You, We Love You Not, We Love You …

February 24, 2011, 3:13 pm

Every year during the college admissions season, some unlucky institution inevitably misfires offers of acceptance to a few hundred or a few thousand doe-eyed high-school students and then is forced to admit that it was all a big mistake. It’s happened to Missouri. It’s happened to Cornell. To Georgia. And North Carolina. And the University of California at Berkeley, among others.

Today the Daily Press of Newport News, Va., reports that Christopher Newport University e-mailed 2,000 students on Wednesday and welcomed them to the Class of 2015, only to withdraw the offers five hours later.

“We understand that for some students this is a highly emotional time and we would like to express our regret for any additional anxiety this may have caused,” the university said in an e-mail message. The mistake, it said, was “solely a result of human error.”

Such a wasted opportunity. The blame could easily have been pinned on “Captain Chris,” the admissions office’s resident answer-bot.

The Captain seemed woefully unequipped to account for the error when we asked him about it:

Q. Why did you extend and then rescind an offer of admission to 2,000 prospective students?

A. Admission decisions are mailed on a rolling basis.

Q. Will heads roll over this mistake?

A. We’re sorry we could not find an answer to your question.

The real decision letters will be e-mailed by March 15.

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  • manitoga

    What’s the old saying? Measure twice, cut once? I’m sure this applies here.

  • tatanka

    This happened recently to a student of mine who had applied for a Fulbright. Several hours after the “Congratulations!” e-mail went out, she received a legalistically worded follow-up, stipulating that the earlier message was to be disregarded, and then adding a saccharine “Please accept our apologies for the momentary joy this error must have caused.” Breath-taking callousness, that.

    And your tax dollars working for you. The late great senator would be appalled.

  • roppenheimer

    Christopher Newport is a UNIVERSITY! Wow, times change. It started, as I remember, as CN College and was kind of an alternative to the Apprentice School at the shipyard. It was in a building across the street from NNHS back then. I have heard that a lot of downtown NN was leveled some time back. I should try to get back there and pay homage to the old “Y” I guess…

    As for the admissions gafs, if it weren’t for computers…

  • 11246028

    It may have started downtown but as I recall it was across the street from H.L. Ferguson High School. And it may have, like Old Dominion University, been once affiliated with William and Mary.

  • tappat

    I love reading little stories like this, because they make me feel what I think some of my students must feel, when they read Plato, Margaret Cavendish, or even the news and arts sections of the New York Times. I could look into all of this a little bit and learn who is who, but I just cannot make myself care to do so.

  • katisumas

    Good grief! Can’t anyone see that this doesn’t have anything to do with race but everything to do with class which is so often the invisible elephant in the room?

    How many students at Duke have a working class background?

  • http://noradiofreelunch.blogspot.com/ Urk

    katisumas- I think you’re right to point out that class plays a large role here, but I don’t see how you can say that it “isn’t about race at all.” The whole idea of insulting someone by calling them an “uncle tom” sets up an oppositon between class-based striving and an aggressive political posture on racial issues and/or a broad cultural notion of racial authenticity. In this case, as is most often true now, its more about supposed authenticity than it is about any explicit political posture. Anyway, as with most things that seem to be about one or the other, its about both race and class.

    tappat- thanks so much for bothering to stoop so far down as to let us know how far you are above such concerns. While you’re leaning over, and before you get a crick in your neck, it might be worth noticing that, behind the obvious subject here of a couple of millionaire atheletes insulting each other, there are issues which deeply impinge upon the lives of your students.

  • rmelton5

    Does anyone else think that Jalen Rose’s response doesn’t really respond to Hill, much less apologize? It doesn’t define just what it is that Rose thinks is an “Uncle Tom.” I wasn’t able to watch the documentary itself, but it seems to me like this is some kind of inter-racial racism, along with a very pervasive trend to Dump on Duke.

  • blue_skies

    I watched the show, and I understood Rose (and his teammates) to say that this is what they thought as 19-year-olds. I was no fan of the Fab Five and am not predisposed to defending them, but I do agree with Rose that his critics have taken his comments out of context.

  • ddwalker

    I did watch the commentary. In addition to “Uncle Tom” Rose also said he knew Duke didn’t recruit players like him, meaning inner city black kids, and later said he envied Grant Hill, because Hill grew up with his professional athlete dad, whereas Rose had no relationship with his professional athlete dad. If I were a Dukie I’d take offense, but I’m not. What I saw was Jalen being the honest, outspoken person he has always been, criticizing a rival on one hand, while admitting his own pain on the other. I thought that all the comments together painted a complex and poignant picture — with race and class very much intertwined.

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