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by
Linda Chavez | |
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RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
Ever since California voters
banned racial preferences in college admissions to state
schools in 1996, university administrators have been
trying to come up with a way to boost their minority
admissions. Now, University of California administrators
think they've found a solution: Give extra points to
students who've survived some special hardship. The idea
is that black and Hispanic applicants will be more
likely to have overcome poverty, discrimination, family
breakdown, crime-infested neighborhoods, overcrowding
and a host of other barriers to academic success. If the
university gives them extra points for having beat the
odds, it will help make up for lower average grades and
test scores among black and Hispanic
applicants.
In principle, there's nothing wrong
with a school considering hardship in its admissions
decisions, providing the policy really is race neutral.
If a student has truly overcome real adversity, it says
something about his character and determination that can
be an important indicator of future success, so long as
he applies these same qualities to his school work. I've
seen firsthand examples of students who did just that.
In the early 1990s, I was chairman of the
National Commission on Migrant Education and traveled
the country visiting with students whose parents were
migrant farm workers. I was always impressed with how
hard these kids worked to prevail, despite daunting
circumstances. Many of them changed schools two or three
times each year, lived in substandard housing, often
with several generations and multiple families under the
same roof. Yet they stayed in school and earned decent
grades. I'm for giving the benefit of the doubt to any
student who's managed to thrive under such
conditions.
But it's not clear the University of
California's new admission policy is aimed at students
like these. Instead, the university seems to be inviting
all black and Hispanic students to cast themselves as
victims of misfortune, with the explicit purpose of
beefing up black and Hispanic enrollment. Even middle
class and affluent blacks and Hispanics will search for
ways to make their lives appear difficult in the hopes
of boosting their admission odds. Meanwhile, some
campuses seem to be applying double standards when it
comes to judging what constitutes hardship.
The
Wall Street Journal reported recently that UCLA
apparently gave no special "hardship" consideration to
one Korean student who helped nurse his mother through a
bout with breast cancer, working after school to pay the
family's rent, while admitting a Mexican American
student who had a nearly identical story but whose test
scores were 390 points lower than the Korean student's.
Although the university refused to explain why
it treated the applicants differently, it appears race
played some role. The school's admissions figures bear
this out. With "hardship" consideration now a formal
factor in admissions, the numbers of black and Hispanic
students have jumped dramatically for the incoming
freshman class, with 9 percent more Hispanics and 19
percent more blacks admitted to UCLA in the fall, and
fewer whites and Asians.
The Pacific Legal
Foundation, a public interest law firm, has asked the
university for its admissions data to determine whether
race is really masquerading as "hardship" in the
university's admissions decisions. If so, it would
violate the 1996 law that banned racial
preferences.
Most of us admire the individual who
overcomes great odds, pulls himself up by his bootstraps
and succeeds in the face of misfortune. But it shouldn't
matter what color the person's skin is.
A few
years ago, the film "October Sky" celebrated the story
of a group of young West Virginia boys, the sons of coal
miners, who built a rocket in the 1950s and won a
national science contest and then went on to college,
the first in their families to do so. They faced poverty
and prejudice, but overcame it. Should we ignore these
boys' struggles and achievements just because they were
white? If the University of California is really
interested in rewarding character in its admissions
policy, it shouldn't treat hardship differently
depending on the race of the applicant.
To find
out more about Linda Chavez and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS
SYNDICATE, INC. |
| Originally
Published on
Tuesday August 6, 2002 |
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