"Diversity" at America's most selective public high school

Author: Brandon Middleton

A journalist suggests that the students at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science are not the right mix of skin color.  An African American student at the school responds by noting that the journalist's article "did not reflect the feelings of the TJ student body" and that "[w]hile diversity is a good thing, it should not be attained at the expense of excellence."  But then another journalist demands that greater diversity be achieved at Thomas Jefferson through greater recognition of character, which would likely become "just a smokescreen both allowing and disguising the determination to admit more minorities," not to mention the resulting stigmatization.