Because that's not what's happening here. They're saying "you had a family member graduate here, so we aren't going to expect the same academic prerequisites fo

Because that's not what's happening here. They're saying "you had a family member graduate here, so we aren't going to expect the same academic prerequisites for your entry". That means that a high-achieving student with uneducated parents will get rejected, while a low-performing student with a parent who is an alumni still gets admitted. This, for an institution that is accredited by the state, that offers credentials that are widely treated as societal merit, represents a profound form of economic discrimination. It also completely destroys any illusion that the college's application process is meritocratic, which is a fundamental assumption of the system at large. This system in inherently racist, because there are plenty of kids getting admitted because their parents or grandparents are alumni. That means that white kids are getting an easy entry to an elite school because their white parents or grandparents, who were born before the end of segregation, attended and graduated from that school before Black Americans were even allowed to enroll. With our extremist SCOTUS now stripping Black Americans of the benefit of Affirmative Action, the only measure that actively leveled the playing field, tearing down this discriminatory system is more important than ever. Especially since these elite schools largely require familial elitism and socioeconomic superiority to qualify for admission, leading to the demographics of students at these schools to sway far whiter than the general college-attending population (because Black people are actively being discriminated against because of the nature of their familial history).