LETTER: Base admission on skill, not skin

Editor,

Affirmative action: an active effort to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups and women. In 2003, the Supreme Court upheld a form of affirmative action in university admissions. My personal opinion on this matter differs from what the courts decided that day. While reviewing the Michigan case, my ideas are strongly against the admission point policies based on race. Native American applicants of Michigan University received an automatic 20 points out of a maximum 150, not because of academic achievements, but because of race. Higher education should not be more accessible to an individual based on the color of their skin. It was Martin Luther King, Jr. who stated on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 28, 1963 “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Affirmative action includes much more than race, I realized this after a careful review of Time magazine’s article in July on “How Affirmative Action Helped George W.” This article brings out the irony of how the president disagrees with Michigan’s policy and how he himself was admitted into Yale.

If I had been a member of the court, my decision would have been against affirmative action. Higher education should be given to those who deserve it. And in order to deserve it, I believe decisions for admissions should be based on academic achievement, life experience, and “by the content of their character.”

Adam Jones