Letters to the Editor

State money shouldn’t be spent on stadiums

This letter is in response to the letters to the editor from Steve Brown and Lori Baker. They said they were against affirmative action because they say it is discriminatory and biased. What they both don’t seem to understand is that one of the reasons programs such as affirmative action exist is because students from inner-city schools are discriminated against from the get-go. I suspect the majority of students here at Penn State are coming from schools in which it is expected you go to college.

Schools in poor areas are often terribly lower quality, and students who make it to a college like this are often the exception. I am not speaking out the side of my mouth; I have some experience in the matter. While my high school was not the worst, it was far from the quality of the schools my friends attended.

Vocational schools were the norm in my school district, because at least the students would be able to leave with a skill. The advanced programs were few and far between. I did not come here straight out of school, either -- it took three years in the military before I was picked up for a college program.

Just the fact that school districts are funded by property taxes is inherently unjust. Obviously, the property in upper-class districts are going to be worth more. These are government-provided public schools, yet the quality of education is drastically different.

Imagine playing a game of football. You are playing a normal team, with a normal number of players. When your team comes on the field, you only have half the usual number of people. After you lose the game, everyone blames you because "the opportunities were there."

Brown implied that some students who got in with affirmative action would not have been able to get in with their grades alone, but I know plenty of college students who wouldn’t be able to get into college with only their grades and without their parents’ money.

I would not be here if I was not on scholarship. What I would suggest is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes before you condemn a program that is trying to even the playing field. I do not like the concept of affirmative action, but until public school systems are equalized, we to cannot let the other team play with only half their guys.

Chris Brown
senior-kinesiology

This letter is in response to the individuals who have expressed anti-affirmative action sentiments openly in the paper, as well as to other not-so-forthcoming individuals who voice the same opinions in a more private forum. I continue to be amazed by the utter lack of consciousness these individuals have about their privileged position in American society, which was not unequivocally earned, but largely created by centuries of exclusionary practices by the white male majority. This lack of consciousness runs so deep that, in the name of "fairness," these individuals equate "qualified," "full of merit" and "deserving of equal opportunity" with only white students.

Steve Brown, Lori Baker and others, I would like to ask you if you even understand how your arguments against affirmative action are built on the false premise that every white student is more "qualified" than every student of color who has been admitted under affirmative action?

Is it your position that each and every one of the 35,000 or so white students is more intelligent than about 7,000 minority students? Prove it and I’ll denounce affirmative action as a discriminatory policy for all time.

Are you suggesting that just because they were not admitted using affirmative action, every white student got into Penn State "on their own merit" and every minority student did not?

Prove to me that all of these white students met the "standards," and some did not have to use their "connections" to get extra consideration, or got in because of their legacy status, charm, attractiveness or interviewing skills, and you’ve won me over.

Aren’t you really just saying in a roundabout way that you believe that every non-white student on this campus has, to quote Baker, "taken an opportunity away from" a more deserving (i.e. white) student?

Maya N. Smallwood
graduate-speech communication