Must we affirm minority collegiate applicants?

TO THE EDITOR:

I agree with Monday's column that the dialogue concerning affirmative action up to this point has been lacking in rationality (Stop with these ad hominem attacks"" March 30) — to my mind, it has been biased, stereotypical and occasionally bordering on racist. But the column seems to miss the point of the debate just as much as any of the letter-writers did.

I don't suggest that affirmative action is an easy problem to solve. But I want to call attention to one aspect that I think gets closer to the heart of the matter than most: the label affirmative action.""

Do minority students still feel they need to be ""affirmed"" somehow" that admissions offices still view them as second-class students or afterthoughts even with all of those anti-discrimination policies in place?

What about the white student who is denied admission because an equally-qualified minority student was up against him? It's no reflection on his academic ability — only on his ethnicity. To that effect affirmative action is in the most technical sense of the word a kind of discrimination.

Before a decision can be reached on affirmative action we as a campus and as a school system need to decide whether the need really still exists a century and a half after two constitutional amendments and 40 years after the civil rights era" to ""affirm"" minority students for being just as good as white students.



Ross M. Twele

Graduate Student

History