Now a lead organizer for the nonprofit, he said his research showed schools like Stanford accept “more students from the top 1% of the income distribution than the entire bottom 50%.”
His fellow Stanford organizers traveled to Sacramento three times to testify before the state Legislature when AB 1780 was still in the process of becoming law.
“These are the various students whose children stand to benefit from legacy admissions in the future,” Cieslikowski said. “Even the people who stand to benefit from it disproportionately don’t think that their institution should practice it.”
He said that while the Trump administration is “exploiting America’s mistrust” of elite education for political purposes, universities should be striving to demonstrate that they serve the public interest, but “Stanford’s decision to continue legacy and donor preference does the exact opposite of that.”
The university’s legacy admissions statement was posted just two days before it announced sweeping layoffs of over 350 employees and a $140 million budget cut.
“Stanford has decided that accepting the disproportionately privileged children of Stanford alumni and Stanford donors is more important than taking free money from the state of California in order to provide financial aid for their low-income students,” Cieslikowski said. “Especially in the face of massive layoffs.”
The Stanford spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question seeking to specify whether the decision to substitute university funding for Cal Grant was a factor or point of discussion in the budget cut.
Cieslikowski referenced Leland Stanford’s quote upon founding the institution in 1885: that “The children of California shall be our children.”
“By clinging to legacy preference, the university is sending the exact opposite message,” he said. “Saying that the children of wealthy alumni and donors come first, they shall be our children.”
