Slow Voter Turnout

[PerryChase]

Affirmative Action works if applied properly. Affirmative Action simply means that you take a person’s whole life experience when judging his/her qualifications.

Should we base university admission solely on test scores? Or should we account for citizenship also? Say a sargeant spent 3 years in Iraq, learned military strategy and distinguished himself on the battlefield; he only has a 2.4 GPA. Should he be declined admission to the university of his choice so the slot can to go to an 18-year-old with a 4.0 GPA?

Do we want all of our doctors to be specialists? Or do you want compassionate general practioners who will care for the patients in the inner-city and in rural Mississippi and West Virginia?

[JES]

Republican Congress encouraging higher education for poor and middle class families:

“The Senate passed a deficit-reduction package that calls for $12.7 billion to be cut from federal student-loan programs over five years, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

It is the largest single cut the federal government has made to student aid programs and is expected to increase the debt burden of students and their families as many borrowers of student loans will face higher interest payments, the newspaper said.

According to the Journal, Congress raised interest rates on Stafford loans to a fixed 6.8 percent. Right now, rates on Stafford loans, which are variable and reset each year, are as low as 4.7 percent, the paper said. Stafford loans are popular among students because they don’t have to demonstrate need to qualify for one.

The new legislation also raises interest rates on Parent Loans for Undergraduate Students to a fixed 8.5 percent from a variable rate currently set at 6.1 percent, the Journal said. Also known as PLUS loans, these loans are granted to parents rather than students.”

[Anonymous]

Where has affirmative action been applied properly? Affirmative action is all about race, not citizenship. If two candidates are close or equal in qualifications, of course they should reserve the right to apply some part of the grade on life experiences. This is standard procedure of many universities and companies and is not affirmative action.

However, to do this based on race is just BS. That is the beef with affirmative action. It is reverse discrimination.

[zk]

“Affirmative Action simply means that you take a person’s whole life experience when judging his/her qualifications.”

No, it doesn’t. Affirmative action means taking affirmative steps to hire/promote/enroll people of particular backgrounds. The only way to do that is at the expense of more qualified persons.

Taking into account all of a person’s history is common sense, but it is not affirmative action.

If we want more black people, for instance, to be doctors, we can’t start with setting quotas for blacks at medical school. Or undergrad school. Or anywhere else. We have to start at the very beginning. We have to make quality education available to all children (no child left behind in no way accomplishes this). More importantly, we have to address the cultural issues that prevent people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds from becoming well educated. To deny that certain cultures, in general, emphasize education less than others is to turn a blind eye to reality. Until that lack of emphasis on education is changed, people from those backgrounds will continue to lag behind the rest of us. And for us to “help” them by hiring them regardless of their lack of qualifications does nobody any good. If we want to help them, we need to figure out a way for them to want to get educated. If that ever changes, then the number of qualified applicants will be much more evenly spread out among all backgrounds, and we won’t need affirmative action.

[JES]

Perry, Affirmative Action as you explain it and as it is practiced are vastly different. If that sergeant took the LSAT today and applied to USD Law in San Diego, they would indeed consider his service. However, if he is below, say, a 157 LSAT score, it won’t matter at all. However, if he is Hispanic, black (not Iranian or Indian or Asian by the way), he will be admitted with a score 5-10 points lower at most law schools in the country, simply for being black or Hispanic. DePaul in Chicago admitted approximately 25+ applicants last year who were URMs and all had under 150 LSATS (gathered from lawschoolnumbers.com). I have yet to find a non URM admitted with that low of a score, and many non URMs were denied with 155-160 LSATs.

Never mind the fact that some of these Hispanic and black students come from middle income to rich families. I know one girl whose parents are doctors from Peru, she is blonde hair, blue eyed, and she was admitted to a top MBA school early admission and they salivated about her ethnicity. What happens if you are adopted and don’t know your background? Can you claim to be Hispanic just to get in to a better school? How exactly do we prove who is and isn’t a URM? If you are a Jewish, white San Diegan with parents who came from Russia and Spain, you are technically Hispanic since one of your parents came from Spain!

[sdcellar]

So, those sound like the current rates (6.8 on Stafford and 8.5 on PLUS). Doesn’t sound unreasonable to me. Are these the ones they’re talking about cutting in half?

[Anonymous]

I am planning on either marrying a Mexican, or just change my name to Gonzales so that my kids will have a free ride when they get to college (assuming they turn out as smart as me).

[JES]

Britney filed for divorce from Kevin F, and I think this will upset many young, angry voters who were planning to vote Dem today. Her southern fans will be too distraught to vote, and Tennessee and Virginia will go to the GOP.

[Anonymous]

I think most of Briattany’s fans (trailer park people) are already Repbulican.

[JES]

In that case it is likely we will see reports of trailer pakrs going up in flames because of the combined divorce / GOP disaster news later tonight:)

[Daniel]

I think I know who Britney is, but who in the world is Kevin F? Maybe I’m not young enough to know. Or maybe I’m not angry enough…

[poorgradstudent]

I wonder if more white people will favor affirmative action as Asians take more and more college spots?

Asians became the largest ethnic group at UCSD in 2002. They’re within 1% of whites across the UC.

For better or for worse, the end of Affirmative Action in college admissions took spots away from blacks and latinos and gave them to asians.

The UC system uses standardized test scores more than a lot of colleges and universities do. Even as someone who had great SATs and a high high school GPA, I don’t think that should be the whole story in college admissions.

The irony is that as white men’s representation in college continues to shrink (which, if current trends hold, will happen), you may start hearing a lot more cries for proportional representation.

[poorgradstudent]

It’s not “Kevin F”, it’s K-Fed. Sheesh, you’re dating yourself there, JES. 🙂

[Daniel]

I gotta say that K-Fed doesn’t ring a bell, either. Sounds like a government agency to me 🙂

[CAwireman]

JES, buck up. CNN just announced that the dem’s are projected to take the house of representatives. The senate race is close.

[Author]

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