Legal Eagle: 2012-2013 Supreme Court Docket

[Professor]

[uebermann]

What are we debating here, exactly? AA or what the supreme court is likely to do or?

[Professor]

[Hyperion]

I don't mind if race or gender are made considerations so long as they're applied equally and pretty much end up as the last consideration for admission. To elaborate, I think that a male applicant for a predominantly female program like social work should receive the same benefits as a woman applying for engineering, or if a program consists mostly of minorities, a white applicant would face a downhill battle, not uphill.

There's nothing wrong with a school desiring more diversity, but it shouldn't take precedent before grades or extracurriculars. It really comes down to how you view the subject. To be honest I think for 99.5% of all college students it's an irrelevant issue. They failed and succeeded to be admitted by their own accord.

[Dylan]

i'm a fan in the educational context, but not so much in awarding contracts, etc.

[dontworrybehappy]

If race plays ANY role in any decision at all, it is racism, plain and simple.

If you have two equally qualified candidates for a job and one is black and one is white, then it looks like a coin toss is in order.

[The dane]

I've never been a fan of affirmative action, mostly because I think it comes too late.

The focus should be on giving minorities equal opportunity starting from primary school, not on artifically giving them an advantage later on.

[Dylan]

Is it so artificial though? Some standardized tests produce disparate results across races. AA can, in a way, be viewed as compensating for this.

Plus the remnants of a few hundred years of racial oppression still linger, whether or not primary education is equal.

But the best justification is that diversity is just good for education, IMO.

[dontworrybehappy]

[Dylan]