thehowe_v7.1

I was reading a column on the opinions page of the Michigan Daily today, when I came across a great article supporting affirmative action. Specifically:

"I do not believe [affirmative action] to be a permanent solution. I believe it is only a temporary fix to an extremely complex problem."

Finally somebody gets it! I've been saying the same thing for three years! If more pro-affirmative action people were this reasonable and logical, I might even be persuaded to agree with them!

Politics time; I'm going to be commenting on an article from today's Daily.

So, they had this article today all about the MCRI initiative to get rid of affirmative action, and how a similar policy in California reduced minority enrollment at the University of California campuses. At least, that was the headline. Turns out that enrollment did drop at all of their campuses, but rebounded at all but the two most academically selective. Reading on, I discovered some rather enlightening quotes:

Diane Schachterle, director of public affairs for the American Civil Rights Institute, said she attributes the lack of underrepresented minorities to problems within the primary school system in California. "I think we need to look at the K-12 systems that are feeding the universities," Schachterle said. "We need to go out into the K-12 system and ... help them."

Poorsina said one of the most successful programs UC has implemented is called Comprehensive Review. The program created a new process under which student applications are reviewed. For example, students are not accepted only on the basis of their GPA or ACT scores, but also on factors such as how many AP courses were available at their high school and how many they took, and whether they are the first person in their family to attend college.

Wow... Imagine that. When affirmative action got taken out of the picture and they stopped treating the symptoms, people actually started looking at the underlying causes. Who would have thunk it? Certainly not me! What I love most about this whole thing is that the article actually improves my opinion of the whole anti-affirmative-action thing. Leave it to the Daily to screw over affirmative action in an anti-MCRI article. Priceless.

The last presidential debate is on tonight. To be honest, I don't want to vote for Bush or Kerry. I don't like either of them, and I'm sick of their skirting around the issues. Both are constantly bringing up "my opponent's record", and how "it speaks for itself". Both are constantly twisting statistics and figures to support their cause. They are both politicians, and I don't trust either of them.

That being said, I decided to use my time constructively tonight, and instead of watching two monkeys hoot at each other I muted the debate and looked up their respective websites. After looking at the policies they outline, here's how I'm scoring them:

• Education: Kerry wins. When I look at his page on education, I see an emphasis laid on improving standardized tests to cover the skills kids need and providing more funding to our schools. When I look at Bush's plan for education, I see an emphasis laid on more standardized tests and pre-school/adult education. Today's standardized tests are worthless, and we need to focus on better education for everyone.
• Jobs: Tie. Both candidates are saying pretty much the same thing - helping the common worker and tax reform.
• Science & Tech: Bush wins. Key elements that swayed me: Bush supports Nuclear Power, increased R&D funding, and has detailed info on how he plans to support alternative energy research and implementation. Kerry does support stem cell, which I approve of. However, he never mentions Nuclear power, his plans on supporting R&D are vague, and the alternative energies he mentions are only more of the same old thing: coal, oil, and gas.
• Environment: Kerry wins. The deciding factor was their policies on the Great Lakes. Bush has a paragraph. Kerry has a whole page.
• Character: Bush wins, in possibly the most important category. I stated in a previous post that I liked Bush better than Kerry, and I stick by that opinion. Here's an example of why: the war. I don't think that we the reasons Bush gave us for going to war were good enough to justify the act of going to war. I believed the same thing when he first announced it. However, it wasn't my call, and I don't (didn't) have access to the information that Bush had at the time. What I do know is that Bush believes he did the right thing. He strongly believes he did the right thing. I respect that. As for Kerry, who really knows what he believes? Whenever he talks about the war he delivers classic politically appeasing statements in an even, unemotional tone. I just don't like the guy. He's too much of a politician.

Edit: Kerry just criticized Bush for not meeting with enough minority advocate groups, citing it as evidence that Bush doesn't support Affirmative Action. Well, I guess that's one more point for Bush. Affirmative Action is such bull-shit. "We need to give minorities special consideration and privilege in order to make them feel equal." After all, if they're not treated like they're different, then we'd all just be Americans. Oh, wait.

So who wins? Not the American people, that's for damn sure. Both have good points and bad points to their proposed programs, and both have bad points to their character. I still haven't decided who I hate less.

There was an article in the paper today about some new initiative to try to get funding for Asians as a minority. I have many things to say about this topic, but I decided not to. People seem to get angry at racist comments. My roommate likes to say that he's not racist, he just hates Asians. I wouldn't go that far. I don't think we should be handing out money to any minorities. There's already a system to give money for college to those who need it. They're called student loans.

...Ah well. On the plus side, apparently in the wake of all that affirmative action crap last year they've changed the admissions form. Instead of just having one essay they've upped it to three essays plus a bunch of "short answer" questions. I say good - maybe it'll keep some of the slackers out. Lord knows there's too many of them here as it is.

I can't believe how incredibly stupid our school is. Apparently, there aren't enough minorities in the LSA Honors College for U of M's administration. So, they're changing the admissions policies. They want to "move the focus away from academics and test scores" in favor of a more "holistic" system. In other words, they're dumbing down the admissions standards. Of the honors college. The whole point of the program is to provide a more challenging educational environment for high achievers. And they're lowering the admissions standards.

...Am I the only sane person in this whole damn university?

While I'm on the topic of affirmative action, I'd like to address something that's really been getting on my nerves. In fact, I may have mentioned this in a previous rant, but it just pisses me off so much that I'm going to expunge more rage now. There is a group on campus (it may even be nation-wide, I'm really not sure) called BAMN. They are called BAMN because they support affirmative action By Any Means Necessary. Now, maybe it's just my peculiar fondness for logic, but it seems to me that BAMN chose an awfully bad name. If, by reviving Hitler and Genghis Khan, giving them killer cyborg bodies, and letting them loose in Washington D.C., you could guarantee affirmative action, would you? No? But you said By Any Means Necessary! How about killing a couple of administrators that don't support affirmative action? I'm not saying that the people in BAMN are bad, but someday somebody's going to take their creed a little too seriously, and somebody's going to be hurt. What's even worse in my mind is that they're starting High School chapters around Ann Arbor. Great, that's just what we need. Tell the pimply-faced hormone bombs that "By Any Means Necessary" is a good motto. Surely only good can come of this! (And don't tell me that high school students are mature enough to realize that BAMN doesn't really mean "By Any Means Necessary." I've only been out of high school a year now, and trust me: they're not.)

Well, the big affirmative action lawsuit is being heard by the supreme court now. Generally, I don't have very strong opinions concerning affirmative action. On the one hand, it seems rather backwards to compensate for discrimination against minorities built into the system by giving those minorities a rather large number of points, thereby discriminating against non-minorities. On the other hand, I don't really see any other way to do it. Ideally, we'd want to modify the admission system so that there is no built-in bias against minorities, thus eliminating the need to put in a bias for minorities. However, I don't see that happening anytime soon, if it's even possible at all.