The email arrived like a temptation.

An invitation seducing me to take part in a questionable game. I quashed my misgivings and filled out the form from my alma mater, noting that I have a child who might apply as a legacy.

Studies have shown what everyone knows to be true: Students who apply to colleges that a family member attended have an unearned advantage over those who don’t. It can be used as a tie-breaker when deciding between two well-qualified applicants, or it can add additional points to an application. A handful of elite institutions -- MIT, Oxford, Cambridge and UC Berkeley -- do not consider legacy as part of admissions, but the vast majority of American colleges do.

Legacy preferences were originally designed to favor white, Protestant men at the expense of Jewish and immigrant applicants who scored higher on entrance exams in greater numbers. And to this day, studies show that the people who benefit from this boost the most are the ones who need it the least. The New York Times editorial board recently described it as affirmative action for the wealthy.

Universities defend the practice because they say it increases alumni donations and engagement with the institution in the long term. It’s almost funny to hear universities with billion-dollar-plus endowments defend a system of privilege because it ensures their own wealth. Plus, there is research that disputes that very claim. If Oxford, Cambridge and MIT do not need to rely on legacy preferences to maintain their world-class status, what does that say about Harvard, Yale and all the other elite institutions who feel compelled to hang on to it?

In reality, colleges and universities will not willingly dismantle legacy preferences simply because they know it would upset too many alumni. Some parents believe that their commitment and relationship to an institution merits bonus points for their child. It’s unclear why a parent’s love or devotion or financial support for anything should translate to her child being entitled to any special consideration for it. In the case of access to higher education, all it does is perpetuate the inequalities built into a rigged system.

Unlike becoming an exceptional athlete or musician or student, being born to parents who attended a particular school required nothing of the student.

I say this while admitting that I was not willing to unilaterally disarm in the current admissions arms race. But if my college or graduate school asked in an alumni survey if I would favor eliminating such consideration entirely from their admissions process, I would support getting rid of it for everyone.

Part of the reason families might be unlikely to give up this advantage for their children is because of how competitive and unaffordable higher education has become in the past few decades. There’s no way I would be accepted to the graduate school I attended under today’s admissions standards. And the current costs at these same places would have put them completely out of reach for me back then, even when adjusted for inflation.

Most middle-class families worry about being able to afford college for their children, and higher education is increasingly seen as a prerequisite to surviving in the global economy. The parental anxiety about securing your child’s place in the middle class or maintaining a place in the upper class may be too great.

Equality is great in theory -- until it impacts your own privilege.

And, interestingly, the public debate about eliminating legacy preferences is gaining steam at the exact moment when historically underrepresented groups might finally benefit from it.

It would be fascinating to see current survey data on how many alumni would support ending legacy preferences at their own institutions. Is there an overlap among those who rally against affirmative action programs yet support legacy preferences?

Don’t expect to see colleges asking their alumni these questions anytime soon.

They may not want to hear the answers.

The double stroller inevitably found itself under scrutiny again.

In the fervor of another garage clean-up, my husband set his sights on the folded 12-wheeler idling in a cluttered corner. It’s been unused for at least a dozen years.

“Are you ready to give it away yet?” he asked.

I made a noncommittal sound, avoiding a direct answer. We’ve had this discussion before. I’ve let go of every other physical reminder of the kids’ younger years -- cribs, high chairs, bassinets, Pack ‘n Plays -- that mammoth mountain of stuff that takes over your house when you have a baby.

But I have irrationally held on to this artifact well into my kids’ teen years. It passes the Marie Kondo test: The thought of it still sparks joy. This is the gadget that allowed me to leave the house on my own with a baby and toddler. It was a symbol of my limited freedom at a time when getting out of the house was supremely difficult. It carried the stories of our small adventures, when I could navigate the streets with more confidence than I was navigating challenges inside the home. It transported us through airports, malls, zoos and parks.

The babies sat in that stroller the first time they saw a polar bear. When we shopped for tiny shoes they quickly outgrew. They took naps, licked ice cream cones and rode countless elevators in that contraption that took up half the space in my trunk. We never used the other parenting paraphernalia much; they never slept in cribs or played in playpens. But we put hundreds of miles on that stroller.

I suggested to my husband that perhaps we needed to hang on to it for when my brother and sister-in-law visit with their daughters, an infant and a preschooler. He seemed skeptical, shrugged and moved on. But the guilt of my hoarding got to me, so I wisely turned to the internet as a way to punish myself.

I asked on Twitter if I was wrong in wanting to keep the stroller. The wisdom of the Twitterverse confirmed that I was indeed in the wrong. One person helpfully suggested that perhaps I could donate it to the four children who had been recently rescued from a burning St. Louis apartment. Duly shamed, I agreed this would be a far better use than having it collect dust.

I reached out to alderwoman Christine Ingrassia, who had posted a list of the children’s needs. We agreed to meet the next day, so I could hand this beloved vehicle over.

This meant I needed to get rid of the accumulated dust, so I started digging through the leftovers that had survived the garage purge. But I couldn’t find the stroller. I texted my husband at work.

He directed me to a small pile, where I made a startling discovery: This wasn’t the heavy-duty Graco DuoGlider I remembered. That was our luxury stroller -- which cost a fraction of what would be considered luxe by today’s standards. Nowadays, a high-end Bugaboo double stroller will set you back more than $2,000.

My husband’s first car, a 1972 Mercury Marquis, cost $600.

No, what I found wasn’t our “fancy” double stroller. It was the cheaper Kolcraft umbrella double. Apparently, I had agreed to give the behemoth away a few years ago.

You might be getting older when you can’t even keep track of your precious memorabilia.

Well, this durable riding machine was more practical anyway, I thought. It was lighter and took up less space. I started hosing it down and realized one seat was covered in a blue stain where a pen must have exploded or marker leaked. The overhead canopy on one side was missing. I unearthed a mangled plastic sippy cup from the storage bag behind the seat. It contained a petrified liquid of unknown origin.

There was no way I could donate this beat-up jalopy. I texted Ingrassia and explained that I hadn’t been aware of the current condition of the stroller when I offered it. She said not to worry: A generous person offered to buy the family a new double stroller that same day.

God bless Good Samaritans.

The Kolcraft double stroller, now cleaned up, has been folded back into its spot in the corner.

It’s ready for my nieces whenever they visit.

It’s silly to get sentimental about an old building, especially one that has seen as much misery as this one.

But ever since the packing started in earnest in the newsroom of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which is leaving its downtown building and heading two blocks east to smaller digs, I’ve been having flashbacks.

I remember walking into the imposing six-story, brick-and-stone building as a 21-year-old intern.

Like many visitors, I paused to read the Pulitzer platform, engraved into the stone lobby wall. Joseph Pulitzer, whose family still owned the paper when I got here, wrote it on April 10, 1907: “I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.”

It all looked grand to my young eyes. On the fifth floor, there were rows of Atex computers with reporters crammed into the newsroom. Surrounded by grizzled editors and veteran reporters, I got a crash course on breaking news and making deadline. It was amazing, but I didn’t plan to stay. I had lived in the largest cities in America, and I had no intention of coming back to this random, small town in the Midwest.

I was hired back as a news reporter two years later.

This time, I walked through the front doors more confident in my Express business jacket. I figured I would stay a couple of years and move on. I was set up on a blind date with my future husband right around that two-year mark. When we met, he had worked at his current company for 10 years. I gave him a look.

“That’s weird. No one stays at the same place that long,” I said.

This is my 21st year walking into this same building. I’ve spent nights here and worked every single holiday shift in those early years. In the meantime, I’ve gotten married and had two children, who first visited the newsroom as babies in strollers and now could drive here. A colleague who worked the weekend general assignment shifts with me reminded me about the time an editor wanted to send me out to cover a biker gang rally when I was nine months pregnant.

There have been people shot in the close vicinity of this building, a former colleague carjacked in the parking lot, and people trapped in the elevator on more than one occasion. Those breakdown-prone elevators provided an adventurous start to each day, and the dark walk to the far parking lot after each shift was a daring way to end it.

I’ve wandered every floor of this space, from the presses in the subfloor basement to the executive suites at the top. Packing up my desk was like excavating the past: old notebooks filled with interviews. A paystub from 2004. A pin-back button a reader made featuring a phrase from a column I had written. A stack of thank-you notes from students I had led on a tour of the place. A picture of my daughter with her elementary school newspaper club when they visited. A note she had written on a scrap of paper and left inside my desk, likely on one of the days when school was out or a babysitter couldn’t make it.

At least 23 of my former colleagues have since died. Dozens have taken buyouts, others have been laid off. I’ve spent more time in this building than I did in my childhood home of 18 years. I’ve been tied to this place longer than I’ve been married. Many of my co-workers and I -- those who remain -- we’ve grown up here. We have covered major events that happened around us and did our best to share them with our community.

It makes sense that we develop an attachment to familiar places filled with memories, especially one with as much institutional history as this place. I could have filed this column from home, but I wanted to come to the newsroom on its last day at 900 N. Tucker Blvd.

I ate a bag of Cheetos and fruit snacks the marketing department gave us in our moving bags, a few gummy bears from a fellow columnist’s desk and a piece of blueberry cake an editor had made. I wrote a sentimental farewell to a crummy old building that I loved despite its dangers, its moody air conditioning system, stained carpet and dingy stairwells.

I felt like lingering at my desk, but it was time to move on.