Affirmative Action?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Rice University
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<p>The idea of affirmative action is that without any active effort to increase URM recruitment (in both higher education and in the workplace), companies and universities cannot be trusted to give equal opportunity to URMs. It's a cynical outlook, but it is unfortunately true.</p>

<p>Also, DeafeningHorn raises the excellent point that universities are committed to providing a fairly diverse population of students, and I use diversity in the traditional sense, not the new-age "everybody is different" sense. The simple fact is that race still plays a role in human relationships; people are generally more comfortable with people of their own skin color. If someone does not see many other people of their own race in their peer group, it becomes easy to think of himself in a somewhat lower regard than his peers.</p>

<p>I wrote a feature for the Thresher last year (I don't work for it anymore, so please don't ask me any questions about how to get involved) on faculty diversity, which hits on some of the same issues as affirmative action within the student body. Pr. Joan Strassman, chair of the biology department, raised the excellent point that if students don't see someone of their skin color in a professorship position, it becomes difficult to find a role model in the university setting.</p>

<p>I know I'll probably get a lot of flak for suggesting that race is still a big issue (since it's apparently insensitive to do so and we should all love each other and race shouldn't matter...), but I think that by ignoring the fact that race is still a barrier in this country, we are only serving to set ourselves back.</p>

<p>Anyway, here's the Thresher feature, if anyone's interested. For some reason, the person who transferred it to the web cut the article off on the word "Michigan," so you don't get the conclusion. You also don't get to see the pretty charts and graphs, but here it is anyway:
The</a> Face of the Faculty | The Rice Thresher</p>

<p>Yeah, I know the headline is cheesy and high school-esque; I came up with it at 4 a.m. and couldn't think of anything better before we went to press at 9.</p>

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<p>OP - the statements are not a contradiction. Affirmative Action is the legally required effort to seek out qualified URM. It is the effort and the law indicates the effort should produce results. The decisions are not based on race alone and so it is a correct statement that Rice does not discriminate based on all the listed factors. Rice works from a large pool of fully qualified candidates to select those that will be bring a challenging, interesting and diverse class - in all of the senses of what diversity means. It is extremely racists to presume that URM are unqualified or the only qualified candidates are other than URM. I know it is heresy on these forums, but Qualified is more than stats. I hope everyone put the effort into their essays and interviews to let Rice know more about you besides your stats. </p>

<p>BTW I have been a hiring manager and have had no problems working within both of those statements on a daily basis.</p>