Posted on 09/06/2008 6:32:56 AM PDT by stan_sipple
The former dean of the University of Washington School of Law said Friday that Nebraska universities must be ready to adjust if voters approve a measure to ban most types of affirmative action in the state.
W.H. “Joe” Knight Jr.’s message to the Nebraska Legal Diversity Summit in Omaha: “Prepare yourselves.”
In 1998, voters in Washington approved a similar measure. Knight said minority enrollment decreased immediately, and has just now started to catch up because of the university’s hard work — and more money spent — on recruitment. Schools have also sought more scholarships from private donors, who can designate their money for minorities.
But a large problem with the measure, Knight said, was the perception it created among prospective students.
“You get a reputation,” Knight said in an interview with the Associated Press. Passing a ballot initiative to do away with affirmative action “suggests you’re not a welcome place.”
Knight spoke a day after University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman said the institution would push for diversity regardless of the outcome of the Nov. 4 vote on the ballot measure.
The initiative would prohibit state and local governments from giving preferential treatment to people on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity or national origin.
It’s being bankrolled by California’s American Civil Rights Institute, led by California businessman Ward Connerly. Connerly has prevailed with similar measures in California, Michigan and Washington in past elections.
This year, a measure in Arizona didn’t make the ballot, and signatures are still being counted on Connerly’s initiative in Colorado.
Knight said recruitment got costlier in Washington, and it would likely skyrocket in Nebraska because of the Midwest state’s low minority population and the need to recruit out-of-state.
Supporters of Nebraska’s measure said that if the ban forced university officials to work harder to recruit people who face barriers to college admission, it’s a good outcome.
“They’re taking the easy way out” now, said Doug Tietz, executive director of the Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative, which is pushing the measure. “You can do the skin color check or the gender check and that’s the easy way out.”
A better way to recruit people who face barriers, Tietz said, is to seek them out based on socio-economic status.
But that doesn’t mean a university couldn’t recruit at a church with mostly black members, he said. They just couldn’t give preference to those people when choosing who to admit.
Knight urged those at the conference to work in the next 60 days to keep the measure from passing.
But he said it’s difficult to defeat once it’s on the ballot, because “the language is innocuous” and most people don’t know what they’re voting on.
“On its face, what could be wrong with the principle of neutrality?” Knight said.
But, he added, “it’s a red herring.”
It’s not about taking two equally qualified candidates and choosing the black one, he said. It’s about realizing that “most of what we call qualifications are subjective, qualified preferences.”
I have read that the success rate in college for affirmative action students is low, and it has been argued that putting students into an academic environment they’re not prepared to deal with just sets them up for failure. I have also read that pointing out such facts is very dangerous and can be fatal to a career in academia. I’m just sayin’, that’s what I’ve read.
These preferences should be banned everywhere. They made sense forty years ago, and they made sense for a generation or so. But we are now well into the second generation to receive preferences, and will soon be into the third generation.
So, are there really people who believe the children of those who received preferences should receive them, and then the grandchildren should also receive preferences?
Time to treat everyone the same on college admissions.
They will find a way to fulfill their mission of taking money from successful people who work to earn their money, and give it to people who vote democrat.
“Knight spoke a day after University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman said the institution would push for diversity regardless of the outcome of the Nov. 4 vote on the ballot measure.”
Perlman sounds like yet another Trotyskite university Prez who has no use for democracy.
“and more money spent — on recruitment”
....I wouldn’t give money to a college that spends money on recruitment....which I suppose means that I won’t be donating at all.
"Barriers to college admission" meaning, of course, low IQ and aptitude.
My own experience was students were admitted who didn’t belong there. Alot of them skipped classes when everyone else was working their tails off.
By three semesters, half the minority students were gone. Far higher percentage than everyone else. You could just see the lack of effort and it didn’t surprise anyone that very few graduated and passed the bar exam, especially the first time around.
I see...sounds kind of like the Obama campaign.
Considering the supposed fact that Whites will be a minority in the USA by 2050, and already are in some portions of the country, i.e. Southern California, this couldn’t come soon enough. Everything tells me that affirmative action is wrong however the libs in academia will do everything in their power to thwart the will of the people.
BULLHOCKEY!!! They know exactly what they're voting on.
A man once noted that his grandfather was denied admission to Harvard because he was a Jewish man. Then came civil rights and affirmative action. Now he has been denied admission to Harvard because he is a Jewish man.
I have read that the success rate in college for affirmative action students is low, and it has been argued that putting students into an academic environment they’re not prepared to deal with just sets them up for failure. I have also read that pointing out such facts is very dangerous and can be fatal to a career in academia. I’m just sayin’, that’s what I’ve read.”
I have heard exactly the same.
Not only are the “affirmative action” students ill-prepared for the whole college environment, they are taking a seat from a student who will be prepared and be much more successful with the education.
“No, Will, racial preference didn’t make sense, forty years ago,..”
Yes, flowerplough, preferences made sense forty years ago when the country was initially beginning to undo laws and customs that had intentionally prohibited black citizens from many educational opportunities, and when so few of them had the financial ability to attend more prestigious schools.
There had been decades of preferences for whites over blacks. Twenty or thirty years to of the opposite was justified, but it is no longer justified because the problems holding blacks back now are internal to the black community and family, and second and third generation affirmative action makes no sense.
They just don't get it. The people don't want diversity for it's own sake. The student body of the University of Nebraska should, more or less, reflect the diversity, or lack thereof, of the people of the state.
Besides, the state is diverse. They've got micks, bohunks, krauts,and lots of squareheads and other scandahooligans. That's just from the rural and small town areas.
You hit it right on the head.He's been there forever too. Physics professor originally. Involved in the anti-war activities in the late '60s and early '70s. He was also a neighbor of my wife's family back in the '60s.
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