For Immediate Release
September 22, 2015
Short Hills, New Jersey: Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE) has issued a letter （ Attached ） to Ms. Catherine Lhamon, Assistant Secretary of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), U.S. Department of Education. The letter requests her office to launch an immediate investigation into a recent complaint filed by an Asian American father whose child was unfairly rejected by Harvard University (mailed out on September 3, 2015). According to the father, his son is truly an outstanding student on every aspect, not only did he excel academically, but he had also done a lot of community services, great on sports, as well as winning several national competitions in Economics and Rocketry. Yet he was still unfairly rejected by Harvard due to his Asian race. Among his graduating class of a Floridian high school, all top four are Asian but none of them got accepted by any elite university in the U.S. At the same time, five students of other races, though ranked lower, were accepted by Ivy Leagues Universities.
This is the second case filed by Asian American families since this July. In his letter to Ms. Lhaman, Mr. Yukong Zhao, Chair of AACE Committee stated: “We are outraged by such blatant discrimination against this outstanding Asian-American applicant. His case reminds us again that such discriminatory admissions’ practices are widespread, happening in many states of the nation. It is un-American for Ivy Leagues Universities to accept less qualified applicants and, at the same time, reject top students from the same high school simply because those Asian American students were born with the wrong race. In the absence of any meaningful enforcement actions taken by the U.S. Government, Ivy League Universities and many other American universities will keep on violating the civil rights of Asian-American applicants on a continuous and systematic basis. We urge your office to take immediate action to provide equal protection to Asian American students.” AACE also requests OCR to urge Harvard University to reconsider its decision on this Asian-American applicant!
Organizing Committee, Asian American Coalition for Education
Click to Read the Letter to OCR