Gutmann decries gap in admission

Gutmann, a former Princeton provost, spoke Thursday afternoon to an audience of several hundred people in the Lewis Thomas Laboratory and delivered a lecture titled “Leading Universities in the 21st Century: Chances and Challenges.”

In addition to a discussion ranging from SAT test preparation to K-12 education, Gutmann also faced a question from a Penn student about Penn’s investments with HEI Hotels & Resorts, which has been accused of workers’ rights violations.

Also in attendance were at least three Public Safety officers, including Public Safety Director Paul Ominsky. When asked whether there was extra security because of the controversy surrounding Penn’s investments with HEI Hotels & Resorts, Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 said in an e-mail last night that she was “not in a position to speculate” about the nature of the security at the lecture. Ominsky declined to comment for this article.

In her speech, which lasted roughly an hour, Gutmann presented an analysis of the College Board’s 2003 statistics, showing that students from middle-class backgrounds are “by far the most underrepresented” at 31 highly selective colleges and universities, including Princeton and Penn. The 2003 statistics were the most recently analyzed, she said, though more recently released data confirm those conclusions.

The data showed that students from the third and fourth family-income quintiles are underrepresented by 8.4 percent in each quintile. That number is “almost twice the underrepresentation of the two lowest quintiles combined,” she added.

Gutmann also said that middle-income families “do not think [our universities] are affordable and do not feel ... as welcome as low-income students do, proportionate to their qualifications.”

“Dramatic changes are needed to help shift these perceptions,” she explained. “Recruiting more middle-income students is very costly and takes a lot of effort [and] energy and also takes discretion to pursue widely.”

Gutmann also addressed how universities can behave in a way that is “publicly defensible.” She emphasized that universities “have to show that they’re publicly valuable, [because] universities do not have a right to exist.”

“It falls to university leadership to articulate and defend the university’s priorities in a way that enhances our quality, our reputation and our sense of community,” she said.

Gutmann used a cooking analogy to explain her approach to problems that universities face in distributing resources.

“Is there a good recipe? Just as universities have a plurality of compatible purposes, I, too, draw upon a plurality of compatible principles to help decide how to distribute resources,” she explained.

The question about Penn’s investments with HEI Hotels & Resorts was asked during a question-and-answer session following the lecture. Princeton has also come under criticism for having investments in the same company, and three members of the student group Princeton for Workers’ Rights were in attendance.

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Gutmann answered that Penn respects workers’ rights, but said the university “cannot take an active role in management issues without jeopardizing our tax-exempt status.”

In addition to serving as Princeton’s provost, Gutmann was the founding director of the Center for Human Values, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. She also taught politics during her 28 years at Princeton.

Gutmann’s office initially agreed to a brief interview with The Daily Princetonian after Thursday’s address. After a reporter sent questions in advance, Penn Director of Strategic Communications Laura Cavender raised concerns about a question regarding the Center for Human Values.

In response to the question, which also addressed the controversial hiring of Peter Singer, Cavender said in an e-mail to the ‘Prince’ that Gutmann “could answer in a way that lauds the Center and its ongoing work, and avoid commenting on the controversy.” Twenty minutes before yesterday’s lecture, Gutmann’s staff canceled the interview, citing a busy schedule.