Tuesday there was a full page advertise- ment in The Dartmouth regarding colleges which violate affirmative action laws in college admissions. I do not know of the validity of their claims. However, it has made me think about the issue of racial preference in college admissions. Whether it is legal or illegal, it is an unfair practice.
A college like Dartmouth looks at many factors when deciding who the most qualified students are. Academic ability is the most important factor, but other skills are also very important. Dartmouth wants to have students with talents in the classroom and outside of the classroom. It also wants to have students from all over the country and world. This is understandable, as a person from New Hampshire has grown up in a very different environment than a student from New York City or Japan. Looking at race is a very different situation. If my neighbor is of African descent, but was born in and raised by lifelong Americans, why should that be any different than my Italian descent (which would not play a role in admission)? When a college or university chooses to accept a less-qualified minority student over a more qualified student, it is doing a disservice to both students and the institution as a whole. The student who got rejected is hurt most of all. Everyone should have a fair chance based on his talents to get into the best universities in the country, The best students should be the ones accepted into Dartmouth, or any other school. What if a student is rejected from Dartmouth for this reason and ends up attending a school of lower caliber? That one decision has altered his or her life.
We can see that looking at minority students who get accepted due to their minority status, they can also be harmed. First of all, they are being reduced to a "symbolic gesture" of diversity on campus. These students quite possibly will have difficulty adjusting to the academic rigors of Dartmouth if not as prepared as other students. It could cause frustration and loss of self esteem.
The institution as a whole is hurt in this process. In discussions with minority students, a majority I have talked to disagree with racial preferences. They believe they were accepted for their academic abilities, but they feel they are sometimes perceived as the aforementioned "symbols." Returning to Dartmouth as a specific example, is has been a goal of the administration to increase the academic image of the College and to attract better qualified students. Although Dartmouth attracts some of the best students from around the world, it is not at the peak of the mountain of universities. By attracting more qualified students, it would attract more students of all races.
When looking at the whole process of racial preference, it is in itself discrimination. My dictionary defines discrimination as "unfavorable treatment which is not impartial." No one can say we are being impartial. One can only say that an admissions office is being partial for a good reason. This can not be accepted though, because discrimination against an individual of the majority is just as unacceptable as discrimination against a minority individual.
Affirmative action and racial preferences should be wiped out. Admissions officers must be prohibited from asking the race of an applicant. This is the only way to make a very difficult and tedious process as fair as possible. The only person who might know an applicant's race is an interviewer, and he or she should not be allowed to inform the committee about the person's race.
Using racial preference is no more than a "scapegoat" tactic by our society to ignore the problems it has. Although there are many qualified and well-prepared minority students, it is the unfortunate fact that higher percentages of minorities live in cities (which many recent focus articles have shown have poor educational resources) than do whites. By the time a person is 18, it is too late to decide we are going to start worrying about her education. Government and neighborhood groups must work together to fix the problems that plague inner city school districts. Education starts from the day a baby is born, and primary and secondary education must be taken more seriously. Once the problem of uneven pre-college education is fixed, there will be no need for affirmative action in college. Racial preferences were conceived as a tool to overcome the racial biases of Americans, but today they are used to cover up a major problem that faces our society.
