President Bollinger's vacation

The Michigan Partisan

By Page W. H. Brousseau IV
TIMES STAFF WRITER

Now that University of Michigan President Lee C. Bollinger has accepted the job of heading up Columbia University, his replacement should be everything Bollinger is not, and he or she should be brave enough to take The University of Michigan boldly out of the 1960's.

Our mother campus, lead by Bollinger, is rife with 60's Liberalism and misguided radicalism stemming from the university's affirmative action programs. Bollinger's name appears on the two lawsuits filed against the university's affirmative action policy, both of which are currently working their way through our judicial system.

One suit was ruled in the university's favor, but despite the fact the law school affirmative action program was struck down last spring in Grutter v. Bollinger, Bollinger has appealed and vowed to fight on.

When a university considers an application, many factors come into play. SAT score, being a child of alumni. biographical information, and iii some universities the applicant's race is considered. With all things being equal the University of Michigan gives 20 points for being black or Hispanic. There are no 20 points for being poor, Asian or coming form a single parent household. A perfect SAT score is worth only 12 points, athletes receive 20 points, children of alumni receive four points and an exemplary essay earns the applicant three points.

This results in a disparity between non-minority and selected minority students allowed admission. Non minority students admitted to the university's law school have an LSAT score of 43, compared to selected minority student average of 34. Non-minorities admitted have an undergraduate GPA of 3.85 compared to their minority classmate's GPA of 3.05. To say a black or Hispanic student applying for admission faces better odds than a similarly qualified white or Asian student is an understatement they face 258 times better odds.

The justification for this act of blatant racial discrimination. and violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, comes from the university's and president's belief that there are educational benefits of having a diverse student body, yet they fail to conclusively prove this.

In the famous Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Court ruled that a quota system for admission was unconstitutional. However, the solo opinion by Justice Powell said the Court would allow it, in certain circumstances, because of the conclusion he reached that education "is widely believed to be promoted by a diverse student body."

Last December in the trial of the undergraduate program, Graiz v. Bollinger, the school's lawyers entered into the argument a study they declared proved that a diverse student body is an ideal environment for learning. Patricia Gurin, who just happened to be head of the psychology department at U of M, created this study. Unfortunately, the judge believed the "solid evidence" that was presented. But a following study by the National Association of Scholars (N AS) found that Gurin's study "misrepresented critical research findings." Pointing out the "methodological confusion" the university employed, NAS gave the four questionable and abstract variables that the university considered when judging the impact of diversity, "enrollment in ethnic studies courses, attendance at a racial/intercultural workshop, discussion of racial issues, and interracial socialization. After using the same database the university used, they went on to say they "found no relationship between racial diversity and educational outcomes," and "the inference is patently false."

In ruling the Grutter case unconstitutional, the judge stated the university's admission policy was "indistinguishable from a quota system" and did not provide principled grounds for selecting particular racial groups for favorable treatment" therefore it violated the precedent of the Bakke decision.

In the Gralz case, which closely resembled the Grutler case, the judge ignored the Hopwood v. State of Texas reasoning that using the consideration of race as the nominating factor in attaining diversity was against the Supreme Court's prior decision in Bakke. Instead the decision closely follows Hunter v. Regents of the University of Cal,jorflia in which cited Justice Powell's opinion, that if racial criteria were narrowly tailored it would be permissible. and the judge ruled it was. Adding to the mire of these judicial verdicts, the Supreme Court's majority opinion and Justice Powell's opinion in the Bakke case are used as ammunition for both pro and anti affirmative action arguments.

What Michigan's affirmative action policy should be called is a racial profiling policy with Bollinger as lead profiler. Liberal thinking is to see people not as individuals but as groups. As far as opportunity is concerned, if you are black or Hispanic you must be unable to succeed without outside help, and if you are white your social class means less than the color of your skin, and for Asian students representation is high enough so they are excluded. Black students from well off communities are lumped into the same pool of black applicants form intercity schools. A white student from the same inter city school, having the same SAT and high school GPA as his peers would not be judged and rated the same as his black peers, but by a separate standard.

Poor white students from regions across the United States and first generation Asian immigrants are denied the same opportunities that their black academic and social counter parts are given. The only difference is skin color, and if that does not define racism the word is beyond definition.

The problem of poor academic performance of intercity black students is not 400 years of oppress iom but a total failure by city schools to provide a suitable education. Nearly the same organizations, which support affirmative action programs, stand steadfast against any and all reform movements concerning public education in poor city neighborhoods. Teacher unions, the NAACP and the Democratic Party oppose initiatives favored by reformers and parents alike. Programs with proven records of school improvement, such as vouchers, home schooling, charter schools and higher teacher accountably are fought as if the implementation of any one of them signals the end of education for America's children.

They fight admission programs which take into account a student's class standing, not his or her race, with no logical rational. The Left's only answer for improvement is more Federal money, however, the creation of the Department of Education, and the continual increase in Federal funding has not shown a correlating improvement in school performance.

The additional attempt of pleading for more money to hire more teachers is a thinly veiled effort to boost the dues paving memberships of the teacher unions, and increase Democratic voters. The Left's struggle to improve educational opportunities is status quo at high school level and racial preferences at the college level, and that is why their struggle is a failure.

Bollinger was asked why he supported racial preferences and affirmative action in an interview with The New Yorker, in his reply he spoke of the excitement of being in an environment with "people different than you."

Then Bollinger quoted Shakespeare's "Richard II" by giving the cryptic, "'Just think of it as a vacation."' Like the saying goes, "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with..." well on second thought, it does not even fit into that category. Of course, Bollinger does have a way with words and inspiring erudition, according to The Ann Arbor News at an assembly of incoming freshmen this year Bollinger, "told students, understand that the more you know, the less you know. Become comfortable with ignorance. It's too easy, he said, 'to ignore the depths of our dumbness.' Four years from now, if the students understand this, the university will have done its job."

That right there sums up Liberal academia in the United States. Students set the wrong goals for themselves, instead of working hard to learn and succeed, they should put their efforts toward becoming 'comfortable with ignorance." Using that logic, Bollinger must be the most comfortable man in the state of Michigan.