[265] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Affirmative action
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Victoria K Anderson)
Sat Apr 28 00:49:25 2001
Message-Id: <200104280448.AAA20232@ten-thousand-dollar-bill.mit.edu>
To: Michael E Rolish <merolish@MIT.EDU>, mit-talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 27 Apr 2001 23:47:52 EDT."
<200104280347.XAA25100@scrubbing-bubbles.mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 00:48:11 -0400
From: Victoria K Anderson <vkanders@MIT.EDU>
Again, I will point out that I never specifically cited racial diversity. There
are many other types of diversity that are important to an academic community.
And yes, I am a co-chair of the Student Committee on Educational Policy,
although my personal views are not relevant to that position. We have not
examined affirmative action at all during my entire experience with the
committee. The feeling is that the issue of affirmative action is best dealt
with by those students who represent the Undergraduate Association on the
Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, although that could
change if it became apparent that students wanted us to examine affirmative
action.
If you had read what I sent, you would have seen that my belief is that we all
stand to gain a significant amount by being exposed to different viewpoints.
Clearly racial diversity cannot be a proxy for viewpoint diversity, but it is
a component. Other components are socioeconomic diversity, geographic diversity
and cultural diversity (of course there are many many more that I will not
list here). How much do we stand to gain by admitting a student who performed
so marginally better academically in high school that the difference in
performance arguably falls within the range where the difference in performance
could have occured purely by chance?
Think of it in terms of costs and benefits (sorry, I grade 14.01). The cost
to the community of not admitting a student who might be marginally more
academically qualified is low. The benefit to the community of admitting a
student who can bring a different perspective to the student body is high.
If the estimations of these costs and benefits are correct (and I think that
it's a pretty decent qualitative description), then the admission of a slightly
less qualified student could be beneficial to the community as a whole.
Remember, the goal of MIT is to educate all of its students as best possible,
and including varied viewpoints and backgrounds in the student body is
important to preparing us for our future endeavors in life. The goal of MIT
is not to simply give admission to the "highest bidder" (i.e. those with
the best academic merit, which varies little by the time the class is being
whittled down).
-Victoria
