What are your views on this type of "Affirmative Action"?

GPA is not a very meaningful way to measure performance of students who have attended different schools. I think what's more of interest is that the cut-offs for SATs and similar standardized tests are lower for ethnic minorities. That's demonstrable racism, and it sucks. But it's not quite an offensive as when it's done on the job. If we're going to practice affirmative action, education is the place to do it, where it has the possibility of giving people real skills instead of giving them jobs they can't handle.

No. It's not fair to treat some people differently than others. Everyone should have equal opportunity if they want to get into college. Why discriminate?

I don't think it's a good idea for schools to have different admissions standards for different races. The result of such a practice is likely to be an environment in which the weakest students on campus are all members of the minority groups "favored" by the admissions process. That would be bad both for the schools and the students.

No, this is bad because, it's just reverse racism.

Sounds like a horrible idea. If it's a private college I suppose they can do this if they want, but why?

I think here at Boulder the system is reversed... and no, I'm not kidding.

I'm pleasantly surprised to see you making some sense, Ptero. :) I would have assumed that you'd be in the 'test scores aren't a meaningful measure' camp.

No. I think that efforts should be put into place to help these "other" American institutions raise their level of education instead.
BUT ONLY if the government ensures funding to these "other", less favoured institutions will they be able to compete.
If an Affirmative Action exists in American colleges, then one should question what is available for the African American, Native American, and other "Non-Caucasian" races in the first place...

I do agree with you, one should enter college with the same merits as others; but one should ask one's self if one really HAS "equal" opportunities...
Don't fool yourself, they don't...

It really burns me; I work with a very intelligent man, his wife is just as swift and his children are the epitome of "good Canadian citizens". Yet, I know that he gets pulled over regularly by the cops because of his dark skin (he's from El Salvador - of Central American and Spanish descent), he doesn't have the opportunity to change his job as we do. His wife worked in a bank in their country; a good paying job with benefits, and here, she can only get a job as a cashier with a country wide grocery store chain, only in an ethnic area. It hurts me to see how they have to work harder to get what we so easily attain for ourselves. As a "white" native of North America, I have to say that I'm grateful and lucky to be born that way. I would not want to be of any other colour and I say this without prejudice, I just know the realities...

No, it should be the same standards.

I am in favor of it for now, because many of those students haven't had the opportunities others have in high school and might have gotten much better grades in a better environment. I believe it is good to have a diverse student body, and if this is the way to do it for now, then I think it's right. I hope that ultimately affirmative action is no longer necessary, but as a stop-gap measure, I think it's worth it.

It's a bad idea. It's more important (and fair) to hold everyone to the same standard than to have a diverse campus.

This is bad - it's like they're saying that 'people of colour' are less smart than Caucasians, hence with their low marks they should be let into the college along with white people who studied their ass off.

No, if they want get to get in, they should study as hard.

As I said in qual: this is the most racist and disrespectful thing I have ever heard of.Is like saying:non-Caucasians are obviously stupid and we accept them for pity...and also mixing races by force is pretty stupid too.The thing should come naturally with time and a proper anti-racist education.Which is an education that talks about differences and respect for differences.Being equal and being the same are not the same thing.One is fair,the other is insulting.

With a child who will be college bound in a few years it disgusts me. Race should not be a factor. Period.
Hard work, grades, SAT scores, and potential for learning and excelling are what should be measured not race or gender or any other non academic factor. I wouldn't want her to get a spot over another student with a better GPA based solely on the fact she's female.
It's just plain wrong.

Making admissions decisions based on the color of the applicant's skin is flat out wrong not to mention how demeaning it is for the students who get in under these lowered expectations. However, targeting recruitment efforts with the goal of getting a more balanced and diverse student body is a fine idea.

I don't think this is good. *But* at the same time, if numbers of different groups are disproportionately represented for no good reason, then something must be going wrong. Take Oxford for example. 7% of the people in this country are educated in private schools yet 50% of people at Oxford were privately educated. While people at private schools have a slightly better chance of getting top grades (which generally you need to go to Oxford), it isn't anything like significant enough to explain the disparity. Then of the 50% of people at Oxford from state schools, only a tiny proportion went to non-selective comprehensive schools (like me) while most went to selective grammar schools that only took the best people in an area (based on tests at 11) and were often single-sex and wealthier than comprehensives. That's despite most of the state schools in this country being comprehensives. In fact, before I went to Oxford, I'd had so little contact with grammar schools that I always believed that they were private schools (there aren't any in Sheffield). For me, to come from the background of the majority of people in this country, then go to a university where people like me are so under-respresented is quite shocking. People at comprehensive schools often do very well - comprehensives get almost their fair share of top grades so should be expected to get their fair share of people into Oxford. But they don't and that implies something is going wrong.

That doesn't mean that people from comprehensive schools should be let in regardless, but it does mean that admissions policies should be closely monitored. A proportionate number of people from comprehensive schools don't apply to Oxford, but then an even smaller fraction actually succeeds in getting in. Many are filtered out during the selection procedure. Some of that may be for the same trotted out reasons - that people from comprehensives are less likely to be as confident at interview, etc., etc. but that's not everything. I know that there are some tutors who interview at some Oxford colleges who do not want state school students to get in, and definitely don't want people from "bog standard" comprehensives.

Um, I had a bit of a rant there...I'll shut up now...

it lowers the standards and no one wins. Same as allowing women into combat.

Oh my gawd -- this still HAPPENS? I actually thought people were over acting this way towards people who're different in some way from the majority? I am very sorry to hear this, and here I thought people were doing better these days. This burns me too! I do not see this in California, at least not blatantly -- people of all nationalities, colors and ethnicities are represented in my city. where I work at least -- and I think probably in other large California cities as well. They should not have to work harder -- what can be done here to stop this discrimination then? I would not wish this on anyone. I did not realize Canada did this sort of thing.

I don't agree with any kind of racist policies. That includes racist policies that are intended to make up for historical injustices. If they want to do something about this, it would be better to simply even out the money being spent on education. In the United States, wealthy neighbourhoods have good schools and poor neighbourhoods have crap schools. That's why there's a problem. Lowering standards doesn't address the real problem.

It's bad. Why should you lower expectations just to say you're diverse? It's very racist on two fronts.
1. It says that people of non-white origin aren't smart enough to get into college without the institution lowering it's standards.

2. It's racist against white people who have worked hard, yet just because they happen to be white they won't be let in.

I often find that black people are more racist than other races though. Look at Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. They create racism with the words they say. Listen to them and you'll see.

I often have to wonder why it has to be that if 4% of the population is black then 4% of the school's population has to be black (or female, Indian, Muslim, etc). What if those people just don't WANT to go to college? Why is it that 50% of Congress is not women? I think it's because women would rather work regular jobs and take care of their families than take on a seat in Congress with all the stress that come with it. In short, women have better things to do.
Maybe that's the same reason black people are under-represented in some institutions.

Are we going to start using Affirmative Action in basketball to make sure whites are accurately represented?
Affirmative Action is stupid overall.

Racism is racism, no matter which way it goes.

Why should White's who are illiterate not be allowed to go to college if non-whites who are illiterate can.

I look a little further into this "happening". So, they let African American men and women into a nice PUBLIC college with a let's say 3.0 GPA, and they let a Caucasian man and woman in with a 3.8 GPA, even though GPA has no huge meaning, I believe that this would cause discrimination in the fact saying "Look I'm smarter than you." This wouldn't lead to a positive campus. There might be diversity, but there is most likey going to be discrimination.

"If we want equal rights, we can't expect people to treat us as superiors." - My friend Rob.

I have to say, that sums it up for me. If "non-Caucasians" want equal rights, then it should be just that. Equal. Same with women. Equality does not mean superiority, or that we should pity them, and thus be treating them as inferiors.

I think affirmative action is equivalent to racism. Getting into a college based on your race is plain and simple racism. I would feel bad about myself if someone "felt sorry" for me because of my race and let me into their school to "make it up to me".

I definitely feel that a person's race should not determine whether or not a person is let into a college. Let the better person win. If a person has a higher GPA, then that should help determine who gets accepted.

Any form of discrimination based on ethnicity or skin colour is racist and evil. And it doesn't matter who is doing the discriminating or why they're doing it; it's all equally wrong.

No I really don't think its a good thing. It just helps perpetuate the myths that certain races or less intelligent. I think if there is a difference in races going to 'college' then it may be coming from the source - i.e. the primary schools or the culture that doesn't promote college education. This should perhaps what colleges should be focusing on to naturally effect the future.

I would hate to be a coloured kid in one these colleges and have got in by having a high GPA - you can just bet that all the white kids would start cutting eyes at you thinking that you were slipped through because someone felt sorry for you.

It's interesting to me how much people here are assuming that there would be negative treatment from other students if a minority student without the grades got into a good school. I can honestly tell you that I never asked my friends in college what kinds of grades they got in high school. I'm not sure I ever asked them their SAT scores either. I think a lot of college students assume that if you got in, then you deserve to be there. It's not like affirmative action students have big signs hanging around their necks. Campuses these days are pretty diverse, and I don't think most college students are so racist that they are going to assume that all the black and Hispanic students are there only because of affirmative action. The real danger that affirmative action poses is that students might get into a school that is too hard for them. What makes a school a good school is the quality of the overall student body, and if a student can't keep up, then that's a problem. But the idea of affirmative action is that these students *will* be able to keep up, and deserve the chance to show that they can, even though their high school grades don't indicate that they can. Plenty of students with good grades and SAT scores get into schools that they can't handle, too.

Sounds pretty racist.

Well see, schools that are already diverse, like you say they are, then they wouldn't need to do this then, would they? But, for those schools, that ARE NOT diverse, they are going to try using this. You wouldn't need to ask anyone what they got, because you would already know that some people got in because of their race. That would be a problem, maybe I think like this because I go to a 99.7% Caucasian school. And, I do know that there are quite a few racist people here...

Just, i don't believe it would help anything..

I assume there'd be negative treatment because I've heard that it happens. Since affirmative action is race based, minority students do, in effect, have big signs around their necks whether that sign is accurate or not. For the minority students who were good enough to get in without preferential treatment, this sucks double because not even they can be sure.

I certainly agree with you that grades and SAT scores don't accurately predict performance in college. I knew kids in college with far better scores than I who dropped out. In fact, I often wondered by what mistake I was admitted. But, year after year I kept plugging along and ended up with a decent GPA in the end.

Even if schools are diverse, there's often a group or two that is still underrepresented.

You make a good point, but who's to say that many of those minority students don't also have the grades to be there? I know some people are just going to assume that they don't, but that's no reason for the ones with the good grades not to go to a good school; likewise, a student with lower grades but good potential shouldn't be kept away either. If they have the opportunity for a better education, it might be worth taking. It's going to suck for the first few generations of of minority students at a primarily white campus, but it'll be worth it in the end.

(see my comment above)
It's too bad that people are going to assume that minority students are there because of affirmative action, but the more minority students there are on a campus, the more of them are likely to do well, and the more likely that people will get over their stereotypes and assumptions.

I've been witnessing an interesting corollary to this problem for the past 6 1/2 years; since Brandeis is primarily a Jewish school (about 75%), it is also primarily a white school (I'm talking about the undergraduates here). I'd say racial minorities represent less than 10% of the student body. It's one of the most homogeneous schools I've ever seen, and I don't understand why anyone who wasn't Jewish would want to go there. It's focused on Judaism in so many ways; there is so little diversity on campus and I think it's very limiting for the students who go there. Then again, it's also a very liberal school; I have no idea if undergrads there assume that minority students are only there because of affirmative action; it certainly never occurred to me that they were. But I think the campus would benefit greatly from more diversity.

How is being 'underrepresented' limiting? I don't see why it would be harder to do well because there aren't very many people your race there. You still make friends of all races. I guess some people might feel stifled. Maybe it depends on a persons frame of mind.

Trying to think of a remotely similar situation, If you and your best friend are the only females in a shop class full of males, and a male teacher who treated you with the same respect as the rest of the class, you wouldn't do worse just because you were one of only two females in the class. The presence of more females wouldn't change your success in the class.

Now let's take that to a bigger scale- a whole campus. If you went to a technical school where there were very few females, but most of the males there were very respectful, and harassment was not tolerated, you would do no worse than if a whole bunch of women went there, would you? You would still make friends with both males and females, and run across them just as often as you would if 50% of them were female.

Maybe I'm just the kind of person that doesn't need to feel 'represented' to do well. Maybe a lot of people feel different.

I didn't mean academically limiting. I think the campus is socially limiting, because there's very little ethnic diversity that the students are exposed to. Likewise, I think it would be socially detrimental to be one of very few women on a campus, or one of few men. Having gone to a women's college which occasionally had a single male student living on campus as part of an exchange program, I can tell you that typically it didn't bode well for the man in question.

Unfortunately, social problems can affect academic performance--the very problems other people envision arising for affirmative action students are social problems, but the assumption is that they have more wide-reaching effects.

If there aren't enough non-caucasian students in college then surely the solution is to improve the standard of the grade schools where the non-caucasian students are being educated rather than lowering the standard required to enter college. Especially when this is to the detriment of academically competent students that happen to have a skin colour which is deemed ubiquitous on campus.

I could see it being a problem at the high school level, but by college, someone should be able to shrug it off, make the best of it, deal with it. It just seems like something a college aged person should be able to handle. I think people are stronger socially than people make them out to be. Being a minority adult, surrounded by accepting and mature adults who make friends with you and don't care what color you are doesn't seem like it should be a detrimental problem. If I were one of a very few whites on a campus, and I had friends of all races, and everyone treated all the minorities with acceptance and respect, I wouldn't feel the least bit 'underrepresented.'

Just go to school. Who cares what color you are?

I think you underestimate the social pressures in college, especially at a small college where almost everyone lives on campus. And remember, there's only three months separating a high school student from a college student.

If the social pressures are so bad at the college level, then something needs to be done about all these high schoolers that are maturing so slowly that they still feel that kind of pressure when they reach college.

I think its just plain wrong. I think that affrimitve action has outlived its usefulness and its time to rid ourselvs of it.

My college doesnt really need a program like that, we allready have a near majoriy (if not the majority) of our college population. Not nesserialy a bad or a good thing. ITs just the way we are. I am not aware of how other colleges do it, and their population composition. I would imagine they are mostly white, just like all the movies about college kids, but them again, its just movies, you cant believe everything you see.

On the long run, it is a good idea...it would just have to work, and who knows?

If this policy is enacted what good can come of it.Why treat people differently

Well, I said no. I don't really think it's a good thing. It doesn't seem fair, but then why do they do it? But if no one knew, then it wouldn't be an issue.

If GPA is the benchmark, it should be applied the same to all students.

It was wrong when they did this with corporations telling them that they had to have so many of each group of people even if they are completely inept at what they were hired for, and it's wrong for colleges to do this. I don't want to hear any crap about how "We don't get then same breaks as others do."
I've been there at the bottom and worked my ass off to get into college and where I am today.
The only ones who want this are the ones who want everything handed to them on a silver platter because they believe the world owes them a living.

Don't fool yourself... It happens much more than you think. Canada is known for having wide open doors to immigrants (no wonder America is getting all bent out of shape about our mutual, very long border). Maybe California's immigrants are not as "new" and they fit in more?? I dunno.
I just did this CV for a guy at work - he's from Zimbabwe and is qualified as a welder yet all he got for a job since he's in Canada is a job on a laminating machine where I work. I'm part of a minority that work there. I'm Canadian and the owners (Italian immigrants from an early age) consider me "French Canadian". English is as current as French in Montreal but not in the rest of the province which is primarily French. They live in St-Leonard which is an Italian (English speaking) community, they have their business in St-Leonard, their children live a few blocks away from them. They're so engrossed with their community, that they confuse Rigaud (a town about 45 min. west of Montreal) with Rideau (anything relative the to Rideau Canal in Ottawa - 2 hours west of Montreal)! They don't like the country (too many bugs and animals), they would not like to live on the West Island of Montreal (very English) so forget about the East end, the North Shore or the South Shore (too french)! Little Italy and St-Leaonard are their stomping grounds and no where else. I mention this because I lived on the South Shore, the North Shore, the West Island and East, Central and all over... I fit everywhere, however, they don't. I'm richer for it, I pity them. Yet, they hire all kinds of immigrants and I know why. They don't particularly like French Canadians because they know their rights too well; they're the hardest workers but they complain a lot and submit their grievances at the drop of a hat to the government. I don't need this, I have a big mouth and brass balls (even for a girl!). My employers gets fines all the time and usually from complaints coming from French Canadian employees. However, most of the staff in production are from distant countries;
Zimbabwe
El Salvador
Trinidad
India
Russia
St-Vincent's
and other Islands in the southern hemisphere.
Of all the printing shops in Quebec, none, but none have so many immigrants. Quebec is like the "Mecca" of printing in North America, there are more printers per capita here than anywhere else on this continent. Why? I dunno! It's just a fact - maybe Ben Franklin on his spying missions to Montreal influenced the Quebecers... Who knows?
Many of the employees where I work would not be hired at Quebecor Printing (they're world wide), they would be in their own countries but not as likely here. They get the worst jobs with less pay and no benefits. I have no benefits, no overtime and etc. But I won't let them get away with it and they know it. I don't really care for benefits as I work at home as well and make more money than they pay me. I can take care of myself and THEY know it - they wear white gloves with me because I'm harder to replace and I don't need them to survive. However, these other people do jobs that require no training and they can be replaced easily. They know it as well as the employers know it. They need their jobs and I feel that my employers take advantage of this.
I'm sorry Galomorro, I guess I'm venting off on you. I've been working there for 5 years, I like my job (designing boxes as well as the artwork for the products). I come in at the hour that suits me (within reason), I take as much time as I want for lunch and leave when I want (as long as there's no one waiting for my part of production) I really can't complain but I get so upset to see the way they treat the other employees who fear for their jobs and don't dare say anything (thank God for the dogy French Canadians!). I don't know what to do.
Don't tell me that there is no discrimination as it comes in many forms. My employers don't like to hire French Canadians because they know what they should be paid, which is always more than my employers pay. The immigrants, however, are grateful for whatever job they can get. What a waste! There are some very intelligent and qualified people working stupid production jobs just because they're "fresh off the boat".
What can we do?? It's real, and it makes me glad to be a Canadian born in Canada. God! We're so lucky and we don't even know it...

Hey! Happy new year!

All I can say is that I totally abhor discrimination in any way. Always sorry to hear such things. Happy New Year to you too.

Gawd! I have to go to work tomorrow... I have a big mouth, I don't think that I'll be able to hold it in much longer. I can't habour all those ill feelings about my employers and not say anything. The worst part about it is that they're nice people, just ignorant and they think they're smarter than everyone else. If they only knew...

Did you really read all that gobledeegook I wrote??

Sure. I think you're right -- many people are "nice people" but still might be quite ignorant.

They're nice people as long as it doesn't involve money, THEIR money in particular. They're not ignorant in that respect, they just think that everyone else is.
They even look down on people who need their paycheck at the end of the week. They don't know what it's like to live with such small wages (as they pay their production people), with no benefits. These people live hand to mouth all the time and they look down on them!! Sheesh!

Yeah, well, I think some of those types are nowadays experiencing more of what it's like to live from paycheck to paycheck and be po' folks due to all the economy nastiness lately. Especially in California.

They almost lost their own home a while back, lost $2,000,000 in a real estate deal. The boss had a heart attack etc... They pulled up their boot straps and started over. So I know that they were once very hungry; how can they belittle the people with little paychecks??

I wish it could be first come first served with American citizen first then those from other countries.

it does not work....history tells the story