Despite over a century’s worth of trumped-up rivalry, Harvard and Yale are far more similar than we are different. Taking the rivalry seriously is akin to treating a sibling quarrel like World War III. For the most part, I think students view The Game as more of a big show than anything else. It’s a reminder that once upon a time, we were actually athletically competitive, that we took pigskin more seriously than divestment or women in science, that our colleges indulged in … well, college-y antics.

So today when I began reading Alexandra Petri’s timely Harvard-Yale editorial in the Crimson, I expected it to be humorous and light-hearted. It turned out to be both, but also much more. After spending several paragraphs comparing the Facebook stats of Harvard and Yale students, Petri comes to the conclusion that “Yale students want to impress you with what they’re doing. Harvard students want to impress you with how cool they look while doing it.” And then the seeming fluff piece takes an unexpected turn:

Someone wise once said, “Going to Harvard means you will have to spend the rest of your life proving to people that you’re an idiot.” Yale students don’t have that advantage. That’s why they need to tell us they’ve been reading “Crime and Punishment” and watching “Amelie” again. Everyone has heard of Harvard, and this makes a wider range of people want to come. It also means that your average Harvard student is more—dare I say?—normal than your average Yalie. Harvard’s sheer world fame draws excellent students from all countries and backgrounds while Yale, less-known, still feeds off more exclusive, east-coast-preppy sources. 46 percent of Yale’s freshman class came from private and parochial schools. Only 36 percent of Harvard’s did.

Some people say that by putting an end to early action, Harvard will open floodgates to people who are applying on a whim “because it’s Harvard.” But when these people get in—as they frequently do—it is because they deserve to do so. Everyone praises Harvard “for the students.” But what makes Harvard’s students so great is that they are in many ways a cross-section of the larger world. They are normal people who happen to be excellent, and this sets them apart. People who go to Yale go because they want to attend Yale. People who go to Harvard go because they can.

I’ve read some of Petri’s columns before and I’ve been wholly entertained, but I find this piece particularly brilliant. Some could argue she’s extrapolating but who would’ve thought one could glean so much insight from listed interests on Facebook and then use that to compare it to the social implications of admissions policies?

Like I said, I think the rivalry is all in good fun, but ending early action is something I take quite seriously and I believe that equality of access at Harvard is pretty unparalleled, especially in comparison to Yale, which – for reasons incomprehensible to me – hasn’t followed suit. Even though my mother luckily had the foresight to encourage me to apply early to Harvard, my situation is very unique compared to others in my income bracket. Eliminating a system that has historically favored wealthy white students has major implications. When Petri wrote “people who go to Harvard go because they can”, she wasn’t just referring to my peers being smart enough to get accepted. She’s also saying that Harvard made it possible for us to find our way here in the first place, that the school cared enough to not just grab the first people who lined up with tutors and counselors at the ready.

I’m a recipient of HFAI and I wouldn’t have applied or been able to afford tuition without it. Early action is a bit more nuanced than a financial aid program but taken collectively, the two demonstrate Harvard’s real commitment to socioeconomic diversity. I know personally that this is true because Harvard in numerous small ways made it that much easier for me to choose where to go for college. I frequently air my continued frustrations with this institution, but I felt and still feel incredibly welcome here despite my family income being in the lowest five percent compared to my peers. I’m not at Yale so I can’t testify to how much more or less comfortable I’d feel there, but I think it’s fair to say that Harvard’s done more than probably any other college in advancing equal access (though admittedly we have more as well). For the most part, we’re not terribly different from our New Haven cousin, but this may be the one area in which the difference matters.

I don’t know if there is a happy medium between meritocracy and diversity, but I hope that this is indicative of its possibility. I’m a pretty staunch proponent of affirmative action, especially when it comes to race (and to a lesser extent socioeconomic status, which is great for low-income kids but not fantastic in terms of racial diversity). Surprisingly, my opinion on the subject is more controversial than my support of mandatory HPV vaccination or same-sex marriage, and I find myself having to justify this viewpoint all the time, even at Harvard and even to my liberal-minded friends. As an Asian American, it seems particularly contradictory for me to take on this view since it’s against my self-interest. So here’s an explanation:

When I started high school, my mother had a plan in mind. That plan involved straight As, perfect SAT scores, and eventual admission to UC Berkeley. Surprisingly, I managed to deliver on the latter without either of the former. But while scores of second-generation Chinese teenagers would’ve killed for my position, I would’ve killed my mother if she forced me to go there. Berkeley’s population, with 42% of students identifying as Asian, was too similar to my alma mater where the student body was 48% Asian. I already lived in a city with the highest proportion of Asian residents in the country. The prospect of spending college in the same minority-majority illusion of my first 18 years was hardly appealing.

Besides, while the children of my mother’s friends were mostly science or engineering majors (stereotypical but reality), I aspired to freelance for New York magazine, toyed with the idea of a sex column, and dreamed of attending journalism school. I wanted to write for the American public — and the public was white, black, and brown, in addition to yellow. And so Northwestern was in, Berkeley was out.

But I never made it to either. Though I initially gave Cal a chance, our love affair (some would call it an arranged marriage) ended abruptly when my 14-year-old self first saw the campus during a February downpour and decided that flipping burgers at In-N-Out would be preferable to the gray prison before me. Four years later, I’d be at another prison — not Northwestern but one that was brick-fortified and ivy-covered. Harvard, however, was redeemed by an inmate population as colorful in personality as it was in skin tone. Best of all, my mother couldn’t argue. I got a plane ticket out of California; she got the pride that came with Crimson parentage.

Nowadays, there are a lot of things I miss about the San Gabriel Valley, where signs came in both English and Chinese (not that I could read the latter) and dim sum was just a short drive or walk away. Boston couldn’t be more different from home. Besides Sunday morning conversations with my mother, I hear Cantonese maybe twice a year here — each time because I’ve made a rare venture into Chinatown. With only one other undergrad hailing from Monterey Park, California — a good friend of mine, thankfully — I find myself in the new position of a minority. But I don’t mind. At Harvard, just about everyone is a minority in some respect.

As much as I complain about how unhappy Harvard makes me sometimes, I question if I’d be more satisfied at a place like Cal. Berkeley is a fantastic academic institution — one I’d recommend to just about anyone, but it’s not the place I’d go to meet people different from myself and it’s not somewhere I’d like to see my little sister at, if only because I think she needs to escape the same high school bubble I was caught in. Admittedly, Harvard is in the enviable position of having an abundance of applicants who are both diverse and equally qualified. Not every school is quite so fortunate, but that’s not an excuse as to why diversity should be lacking, especially since the initiatives at UCLA seem to bring about very tangible results.

Maybe I underestimate how much I would’ve ventured away from the familiar had I gone to Berkeley. Still, for all the autonomy I may have over who I become acquainted with, I doubt that my groups of friends there would be as diverse as they are at Harvard. And though I don’t value my relationship with JB because he’s gay any more than I love CK because she’s black, race — like everything else — still matters. I am positive that my relationships with people of different colors, sexual orientations, religions, etc. shape and influence my world view for the better and that I will be better off when I graduate for having known and loved people who are not mostly white, Asian, or Californian. Perhaps I would’ve met some of them (or their equivalents) anyway, but I know that at Berkeley, it would’ve been much harder to forge a bond with a tongue-ringed five-foot wonder with a Southern drawl and skin several shades darker than my own. And wouldn’t that have been a shame?

From the Associated Press: FDA Eases Limits on Morning-After Pill

The good news: Women 18 and older can now obtain Plan B without a prescription. The bad news: Teenage girls still face restrictions.

A partial victory, however, is better than none at all. Readers of my private blog might recall an entry I wrote a few weeks ago about my own experiences with obtaining Plan B. In light of recent news, I have decided to repost it publicly here:

Excerpted from LiveJournal entry, “When Plan B is thrawted, what’s our Plan C?” (August 7, 2006)

I took Plan B for the first time last month. Since I’m not on the birth control pill, I wanted to play it safe when the condom slipped off. The entire process of obtaining a packet of Plan B was stressful in an already distressing situation — from locating a pharmacy that didn’t require a prescription to filling out the forms and having to use someone else’s address instead of my own. And I’m an adult who lives in Los Angeles. My experience made me empathize deeply with adolescent girls without understanding parents and with women residing in unaccommodating conservative areas. If it was such a disconcerting process for me, how terrible must it be for millions more out there?

I work, I go to Harvard, and I date guys who are MBA candidates. I’m not exactly the typical case study for the pitfalls of premarital sex. Still, if I found myself caught in a situation like that (through no fault of my own), how many other women out there are in the same position? Plan B is not just important for the poor or for the rich or for the uneducated or for the young. It’s important for all women. We shouldn’t have to suffer through an unnecessary bureaucratic struggle to locate it. Our government should be making it as easy as possible.

Will some people abuse Plan B’s over-the-counter availability, if legalized? Probably, but it’s their choice, their bodies, and their morality. That’s not for anyone else to regulate. So I find it repulsive and mind-boggling that against all common sense, the FDA continues to delay over-the-counter access to Plan B. This isn’t gun control here. This is uterus control. What happens when emergency contraception is rendered unattainable by our government? The answer: pregnancy followed by an abortion, miscarriage (not unlikely considering the stress), or childbirth, all potentially traumatizing and life-changing. How can a group of wealthy, white men decide the fate of millions of women, many of them with backgrounds unlike theirs?

Yet dishearteningly, it is proving far to difficult to obtain an abortion. For city dwellers, finding a clinic is inconvenient but not unrealistic. It’s a different story in less metropolitan areas. There is one abortion clinic left in the entire state of Mississippi. What are women supposed to do when their first option requires a prescription no one will give and their second option is virtually impossible?

There are no easy answers to these questions, though just about everyone seems to have one. There are people purporting to be the watchdogs of American morality. There are people claiming to look out for women’s health. What I don’t see is anyone taking care of women’s emotional well-being. And isn’t that what’s impacted most in the event of a pregnancy? Until legislators cease kowtowing to the religious right, women’s bodies and minds are the property of the US government.

I don’t think this is a liberal issue or a democratic issue. My Republican friends support my right to choose, as much as I support yours. We may not use this right, but it’s good to know it’s there, and I, for one, am going to be responsible about it. For millions of women, unfortunately, choice exists only in theory.