Columbia's student daily, the Spectator, seems to have instigated a small furor on campus when a columnist wrote that "universities should not bend or change their admissions standards in order to admit athletes." This, of course, is not a new debate, and athletes rose to their own defense in the newspaper. Many mentioned that colleges admit musicians and actors to create a diverse class, so why exclude athletes? This is a big dodge. Of course, the respondents are right that diversity is an asset--surely there are intangible benefits to having athletic, musical, and Latino classmates. The real question is which attributes are worth making exceptions for. Racial and ethnic diversity--to my mind, anyway--is a no-brainer. But what about other attributes? You want musicians around, but you want musicians who are also smart and well-rounded students; thankfully, you don't have to make exceptions in the admissions process to attract them. (The apologias didn't mention that actors and musicians aren't aggressively recruited: Coaches don't search for them, visit them, offer exemptions from SAT requirements, or promise them help scheduling classes around violin practice.) Likewise, you want athletes around, but you want ones who meet those same criteria--and, in reality, they often don't (we're talking about recruitees, not walk-ons). So colleges sometimes accept people whose only contribution is that they're good athletes. Why? At schools where major sports (football, basketball) generate revenue--through ticket sales, sponsorships, and broadcast rights--for money-losers (crew, fencing), this makes some sense. (But small schools rarely net money off any sports; according to a spokesman, Columbia does not.) And alumni pressure--not to mention the donations that correlate to sports success--provides some incentive. Is that enough to merit exceptions for athletes? I don't think so. P.S.: By the way, I don't mean to argue that athletes can't meet basic academic requirements once they matriculate; the best book on this subject--The Game of Life, coauthored by a former president of Princeton--shows that they usually can. But that still doesn't mean they should be chosen over kids with better grades and scores. --Adam B. Kushner