More and more college admissions offices are inquiring about student applicant's criminal histories and making it nearly impossible for applicants who been convicted of crimes to gain admissions. In Massachusetts, nearly 75% of colleges inquire about criminal histories as a standard part of their student application process, according to "Requiring Criminal Record Disclosures in the College Application Process," recent research by Robert Stewart prepared for the annual meetings of the Law and Society Association to be held May 2014 in Minneapolis. Herein Melissa Carson explores how and where this trend began and describes her own discrimination experience at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She concludes that one in four adults in the U.S. will be convicted of a crime in their lifetime. Around 50% of those people, in Massachusetts, never go on to re-offend. Carson states that it is unlikely that she can be convinced that these people deserve to be permanently barred from access to quality public higher education and continue to be punished by, of the all national establishments to do so, the educators of American society.