Last night in Boylston Hall, over 40 Harvard students listened to two speakers discuss the fairness of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and its overall weight upon college admissions at an event sponsored by the Institute of Politics.

Robert A. Schaeffer, public education director for the Fairtest organization, stated Fairtest's position that the SAT should be optional for college-bound seniors.

"To require the admissions testing game is a distortion of the educational process--it reinforces societal discrimination," Schaeffer said. "[Placing] importance on test scores deters otherwise qualified applicants from applying to colleges."

According to Schaeffer, the problem of standardized testing fairness has recently had a controversial place in college admissions. On Monday, federal judges in Philadelphia ruled that the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) minimum SAT requirement was racially biased and not educationally related.

"SAT minimum requirements exclude African American athletes, low-income kids, and women in general," Schaeffer said.

Schaeffer offered statistics about SAT gender fairness. He said that women, who make higher grades in high schools, on average score 42 points lower on the SAT.

SAT preparatory courses like the Princeton Review and Kaplan are also give wealthier students an unfair advantage, according to Schaeffer. Preparatory courses like these are "steroids to boost test scores," he said.

He offered positive feedback from colleges who do not require the SAT and said that these schools report that they like the students better who are chosen without test scores.

"These students spend their weekends reading Shakespeare or at soup kitchens, not at Princeton Review or Kaplan," Schaeffer said.