[481] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
quotas, affirmative action, etc.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wally)
Thu May 3 09:09:04 2001
Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 09:12:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Wally <wally@sub-zero.mit.edu>
To: mit-talk@mit.edu
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0105030855260.2811-100000@sub-zero.mit.edu>
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One thing to remember about affirmative action programs is that they're
not intended to be permanent fixes; the goal is, at some level, to
overcompensate for a perceived wrong so as to (as quickly as possible)
bring the racial profile of students and employees up to a more
'evenhanded' level. The notion is kind of a dialectical one, for all you
wacky Hegelians out there (or Marxists, for that matter). However, because
AA disporportionately favors certain groups, the whole process has to be
distasteful for everyone for a while -- those that 'benefit' do so at the
expense of a certain security, while those who are (allegedly) robbed of
supposedly equal opportunity feel shafted (though AA hiring/admissions
processes are no more arbitrary than their 'unbiased' analogues).
The fact is, other places need AA programs a hell of a lot more than MIT.
Especially when so many students here already question their own right to
attend this school...Race-blind admissions free MIT from the problems of
insecurity and racial bias that go with AA programs. Simply put, they
should simply file away the names of the applicants, refer to them by
number, consider subjective materials (essays, recommendations) only after
performing as objective as possible an analysis of the entire applicant
pool, and notify all applicants of all scholarship/cultural opportunities
(send everyone a women@mit flyer, for instance, and not consider whether
they should target that information only at incoming female students). Of
course, since the subjective part of the application is likely the most
important (else a number of people I know wouldn't be here), there's the
risk of giving it short change, and crippling the admissions process in a
way. I dunno.
Ignorant but well-meaning,
W.
