Living in a pattern of Ivy League leaders
As the election season is in full swing and more and more attention is being placed on the candidates, a fact popped up that sparked my interest. From 1988 to 2017 we will have had a president who has a degree from either Harvard or Yale.
It makes sense that two of the top universities in the country, Harvard being no. 1 and Yale no. 3 according to U.S. News’ College Compass, would produce a few presidents — but 29 years is no small coincidence.
Another fact jumped out at me as well that all current Supreme Court justices have received their law degrees at Harvard or Yale.
How have two institutions dominated the presidency for what will be for 29 years? How, out of 200 accredited law schools in the U.S., have all nine Supreme Court justices come from just the two?
The simple answer is that Harvard, Yale and many other Ivy League schools are a combination of talented students mixed with some of the most powerful connections in our society.
College is not just about your education. It’s important to remember that the people you meet and the connections you make can truly define your success or failure in the real world.
If you are one of the talented students accepted into Princeton, Yale or Harvard, then it seems you have a pass into the club. This club dominates the top positions in our society from politicians to businesses men to artists and has widespread connections, power and influence in our society.
This club is filled with the best and brightest our society has to offer, however students from known “legacy families” — whether their parents are rock stars, celebrities or political prizewinners — get a free pass into these universities through their family connections.
Our 43rd President, George W. Bush, was a legacy at Yale. His father George H. W. Bush attended Yale and graduated in 1948, and his grandfather Prescott Bush, a Senator from Connecticut, attended Yale and graduated in 1917. Even his great-grandfather James Smith Bush attended Yale and graduated in 1844.
Furthermore, George Bush Sr. and Jr. were both part of the Kappa Delta Epsilon fraternity, a frat that has produced six presidents, including Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, and both Bushs.
Even the candidates we see battling it out today, President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney, are in “the club.” Obama graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991 while Romney graduated from Harvard Business School in 1975.
We need to recognize this system as one that has positives and negatives for our society. A positive is that smart, talented individuals are given opportunities to succeed in our society. A negative is that if you don’t make it into “the club” or are not born with these connections, you have to work much harder to achieve that level of success. It is my prediction that the days of a president coming from a small liberal arts college, like Ronald Reagan did, are over.
Keep that in mind when you vote this November, both candidates are elites and both are in “the club”.
Ryan Tarinelli can be reached at [email protected]