Posted on 10/11/2003 2:35:50 PM PDT by pabianice
SPRINGFIELD, MA - The University of Massachusetts will no longer award points to applicants based on their race, but it will still consider a student's minority status when deciding whether he or she should be admitted to the Amherst campus.
Michael Gargano, vice chancellor for student affairs and campus life, said the campus decided last month to change its policy because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that struck down the University of Michigan's point system for undergraduate admissions. The system gave more weight to an applicant's race than to some measures of academic performance.
The court said colleges still can consider race as long as it isn't the only factor in admitting a person.
"We will be using race as a consideration," Gargano said yesterday. "We will be looking at each applicant as an individual."
Along with minority status, the school awarded points to a student for categories including SAT scores, high school grades and grade point average. None of those categories will be awarded points any more.
"You need to be consistent with how you evaluate an applicant," Gargano said. "If we're not going to use points for race, we're not going to use them for anything else."
Ohio State University announced a similar change to its admission policy earlier this month, opting to add four essay questions to its undergraduate application to find out more about prospective students.
Gargano said there will be no changes to the UMass application, and administrators won't "get into a discussion about race" with applicants.
"We're looking at the total individual and how that individual could contribute to a diverse student population," he said.
Gargano said he isn't concerned that the new system will mean a drop in minority students who apply and who are accepted at UMass. The school will begin working closely with minority student advocacy groups, including the Hispanic College Fund and the National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students, as well as reaching out to more minorities at college fairs and workshops.
About 18 percent of the 16,400 students who applied to UMass for this academic year were minorities, according to Marilyn Blaustein, the university's director of institutional research.
Of the 4,000 incoming freshmen this year, 17 percent were minorities, Blaustein said, and 17 percent of UMass's 18,000 undergraduates are minorities, she said.
"The UMass-Amherst student body should be reflective of national demographics," Gargano said. "When I look at diversity, it's more than just skin color. We're looking at gender, a representation from all 50 states, sexual orientation and other factors that create a diverse campus."
More double-speak bullsh*t from a once excellent school that has dived head-first into the race pimp toilet. They will "manage" to keep packing the campus with students who can't do 7th grade math and who are "behaviorly challenged." The average SAT score of the class of 2006 is 330 points below that of the class of 1967.
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The sad part of affirmative action is that it hurts those folks it is designed to help. When you place someone in a position for which they are not qualified, you doom them to failure and failure brings bitterness. We've all seen it. Black person promoted to a position to which they cann't perform and what happens? They blame everyone else for their failures, especially white folks. Ya, that's what we need more people in this country frustrated by their own incompetence. Just how is this supposed to be good for our country? Sometimes I think the liberal left actually hate black people and put them in positions just so they will fail, which then justifies their original oppinion that blacks are inferior.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that blacks are less intellegent or competent that whites but rather that forcing a certain percentage of blacks to be in any given school or profession is stupid. If 12% of the population is black, then 12% of our student body should be black, right? Wrong! Out of that 12%, what percentage goes to traditionally black schools? Around here, it sounds like half of the college bound blacks want to go to FAMU. (Go Rattlers!) Additionally, those schools in areas where the black population is greater than 12% are trying to get their black student body to equal the percentage in the local population. Then you have that portion of the male black population who have relationships with the law that prevents higher education. Add the percentage that don't graduate from high school and the cultural aspect that going to college is acting white and you have a lot less that 12% of the available students who are black. Assuming that the bell curve for both white and black is identical except for the volume, you need to dig deeper (lower SAT's) to actually obtain 12% black student body. The problem is that we just don't have enough black folks to go around. We need more minorities. Hey, not to worry, We'll just lump in Latinos, Asians, whatever, so that we can say that our minority population is such and such a percentage. And if we don't have enough in America, hey, the world is full of minorities, we'll just give 'em scholarships so they can come to America and diversify our student bodies.
Not that I am applying. I already have degrees in math and engineering.
But one has to wonder...
"You need to be consistent with how you evaluate an applicant," Gargano said. "If we're not going to use points for race, we're not going to use them for anything else."
If we can't use race...then we won't use SATs or grades either...
So...is it a lottery now???
Oh, I thought this was about a selective school. I mean, unless it's changed since the seventies, the secret to acceptance at ZooMass was to apply.
As a result, a UMass diploma is basically meaningless. You just can't tell whether the recipient is working on a level with selective schools (some are), or whether the recipient coasted in, stayed stoned for nine years in residence, wound up with a sympathy BA, and can't do junior-high level work. I have run into UMass grads who couldn't read a MassPike toll ticket. Literally. So I find it hard to believe that anything they can do can degrade the admissions standards any lower than they are.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Gotta call el toro poo poo on this one. There are white students at traditionally black colleges. Some of them are even there on -- no joke -- diversity scholarships.
See this essay.
Personally, I think that if some schmo wants to start a college for just his own race (or people over 6' 2" tall, or midgets, or broccoli haters, or whatever) he ought to be free to do so. But in context it's important to remember that the historically black colleges got started in a period when Affirmative Action at white colleges meant Affirmatively Ejecting any Negro who was uppity enough to apply.
Sixty years ago -- a flash, in the history of our republic -- blacks didn't attend the Ivy League, or the service academies, or other elite institutions, no matter how smart they were. That was immoral. Sending X% of any race to these elite institutions, no matter how dumb they are, is not the answer (well, it's some universities' answer... LOL).
A sensible answer would be to have two cutoff scores. One is the usual one -- you just take anybody above that. The second is a rock-bottom-minimum one. That should be set where people above it can do the work and where kids who'll get frustrated and fail, fall below it. The affirmative action zone is the one between those two parameters. You pick minorities for your quota from the upper end of this zone -- that way affirmative action damages the reputation of neither the school nor the minority, and you help out people whose ancestors were the victims of monstrous discrimination.
The fact that affirmative action has damaged the reputations of both universities and racial minorities in this country, tells us that people are not using such a plan.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Which begs the question, if blacks get preferential treatment in admissions policies, do they then get preferential treatment all the way through? And if not, why not? Why shouldn't they also receive extra points on their examinations and papers, too?
That's particularly tragic in light of the way SAT scores have been puffed over the decades to hide the nationwide decline. I don't have the exact numbers but going on what I remember, an SAT score from 1967 would have to be "adjusted" upward considerably to be compared to a similar result today. So even if the average score were the same, it would be lower once you'd adjusted it for (grade) inflation.
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