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4 • The Red and Black • Tuesday. April 30.1996
OPINIONS
The Red & Black
Established in /<W.? - Incorporated WHO
An independent student newspaper not affiliated with the University of Georgia
Brandon Haddock/Editor in Chief
Wendy Wolfenbarger/Managing Editor
Chad George/Opinions Editor
■ EDITORIALS
Race-based admissions
necessary for diversity
Leslie Bates, director of Minority Programs and
Services, brought up some good points concerning race-
based admissions policies at the University in his inter
view with The Red and Black. We agree with Bates as
sertion that the proposed decision eliminate race as a
factor for admission would only hurt the diversity of the
campus.
Bates said that criteria are al
ready being used that have little to
do with academic quality. The uni
versity already considers geographic
origins, gender and a multitude of
different talents (including athletic,
musical and others) to decide who
should be admitted to the next
freshman class. Tom Jackson, direc
tor of public information, was quot
ed in the April 10 Red and Black as
saying race was one of the factors used in narrowing
down the field of applicants who had similar academic
records.
No one seems to have a problem
with using these factors to decide
the fate of potential students. In
fact, without them, we doubt the
University could make the already
difficult decisions needed to pare
down the thousands and thousands
of applicants. If the only factors con
sidered were academic (SAT scores,
grade point average and class stand
ing) the sheer amount of high school
students with similar academic records would make the
admissions process a nightmare.
But, as Bates pointed out, no one seems to mind al
ternative methods of narrowing the field — unless that
method includes a racial factor.
SAT scores are not always accurate indicators
It has been extensively proven that blacks do not
typically score as well as whites on SATs. While it can
be exhaustively debated as to why this is, the fact re
mains. The fact also remains that blacks who score low
er on SATs have the same ability to do well in college as
whites with slightly higher scores. We believe it is ab
solutely necessary to take race into account when ana
lyzing such scores.
The issue of campus diversity also plays a part in
the battle of collegiate affirmative action. Recently, the
university has been wrestling with the idea of making
the multiculturalism requirement a part of all
University majors’ core curriculum. But at the same
time, the state is considering removing affirmative ac
tion from admissions, which would lower the racial di
versity of the campus. Perhaps the University should
fight to keep the multiculturalism it already has before
considering a new requirement. We believe that multi
culturalism classes are a good idea, but pale in compari
son to real-life interaction with those of other races.
Race-based admissions criteria help promote that inter
action.
We are not advocating the admission of sub-par stu
dents simply because they are part of a minority. We
don’t believe the University’s admissions criteria result
in such occurrences. We do strongly believe that it is ab
solutely necessary to use factors other than academics
to decide border-line admission applicants. And in order
to preserve diversity, we believe race should be one of
those factors.
File
Tom Jackson
File
Leslie Bates
STAFF
NEWS: 543-1809
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■ QUOTABLE
"Of the whole day, I was most excited about the $1,000.
Anyone can bid and win, but not everyone spins $1.00.
Jennifer Brewster, about her winning performance on "The
Price Is Right."
WN6X Mb BGLL ATIAHTIC TIE THE KNOTT-
Out-of state tuition increases kill diversity
It's so nice that the University is trying to pro
mote diversity in its curriculum, but at the same
time it is also planning to destroy it in its stu
dents.
Sure, those folks on the Board of Regents
want us to have multicultural classes, but they
sure don’t want the students to experience any of
it outside textbooks.
By raising out-of-state tuition, the university
is killing diversity.
People from outside of Georgia come to the
University for many different reasons, but they
all have one thing in common: the evil enemy of
out-of-state tuition.
I’m not saying that out-of-state students
should have the same tuition as in-state stu
dents. My parents have never paid taxes in
Georgia, so I didn't expect to get that wonderful
in-state tuition (which bears little resemblance to
the $2,000-plus that I pay each quarter).
But that is where it gets tricky. I don’t (or
didn't when I first came here) qualify for in-state
tuition in any state in the country.
Why?
My father is in the Navy. I graduated from
Nile C. Kinnick High School in Yokosuka, Japan
— and I didn’t qualify for in-prefecture tuition
there either. My parents and I thought I could be
considered in-state in Texas. We lived there for
four years before moving to Japan, and my sister
had qualified for in-state tuition her last two
years at Texas A & M. But Texas A & M didn’t
see it the same way my parents and I did. When
I received my acceptance letter it said “you have
been admitted as an out-of-state student.”
So there went that idea, and I came to
C. Trent
Rosecrans
Georgia with this fool idea. I had aspirations of
one day becoming a full-fledged citizen of
Georgia.
I did all the necessary things — my bank is in
Georgia, my driver’s license is in Georgia (I won’t
even touch what a hassle that was), my car is
registered in Georgia, the state of Georgia takes
a wee chunk of my feeble paycheck every other
week, the state gets some money from me in
sales tax and I am registered to vote in Georgia.
But yet, because I only came to this state for
school (who knows what I’m going to do or where
I’m going to be after graduation >, I will never be
considered for that unreachable goal of in-state
tuition and a college loan debt-free retirement.
As we speak, the state of Georgia is racking
up interest on my student loans. Here is where
my wacky student loan/state government/
University bureaucracy conspiracy comes in.
The state is collecting money from the interest
on my loans to pay for school. The more money I
have to borrow, the more money they get. And to
make sure they keep getting a steady flow, they
will never let me be in-state.
OK, that’s a long shot. But because nobody
will tell me how these things work, just that I
shouldn’t waste my time, I have to make up some
excuse about why I will die in debt.
My puny interest isn’t that important to
them, but heck, it is important to me. My future
looks as if it will include quite a bit of poverty.
The problem with this loan thing is that they
expect me to pay it back. Sure, it helped back in
the day when there were jobs college graduates
could get, but we live in a day and age when a
degree is nothing more than fancy toilet paper.
But the real reason (so they say) for raising
out-of-state tuition is to have out-of-state stu
dents pay 100 percent of the cost of educating us.
The problem is one of the reasons I came here
in the first place. You shouldn’t have to pay for
100 peroral of the cost, because it is a STATK
SUPPORTED university. That’s why I didn’t go
to a private college — I can’t afford to pay what it
costs to educate me. Am I just that stupid?
I thought the whole idea of a state supported
university was for the taxes of the citizens to go
for their children’s education. But my parents
have spent taxes for education in six states, and
I’ll never see one cent of it.
If the University is truly interE»sted in being a
diverse campus, it shouldn’t work to turn away
out-of-state students. By unreasonably raising
out-of-state* tuition, this is exactly what it is do
ing.
Maybe they just don’t like me and that’s what
this is all about.
— C. Trent Rosecrans is a staff writer for The
Red and Black
Quiet time being alone in public rejuvenates
It’s funny how it takes only silly little things
to make my day when I’m alone in public. All
the people, all the stuff and all the events that
usually fade in the fuzzy background become
crisp and meaningful. Lettuce-crisp and ultra
meaningful.
This summer I went to Edinburgh, Scotland
alone for a weekend. I had been studying in
Oxford, England with several other bloody-
Yank college students from UGA, and I decided
I wanted to try my hand (and my feet mostly,
actually) at traveling alone.
By the second day, I was strangely lonely. I
wasn’t depressed; I was enjoying my loneliness.
Lonesome Brandon, The Tragic Traveler, that
was me. I hadn’t bathed in a couple days (how
Euro!) because the showers at the Youth Hostel
were broken, and I had been surviving on
newspaper-wrapped fish ’n’ chips. I was soak
ing up the culture.
On that second night, I was walking down a
back street on the outskirts of Edinburgh,
strolling slowly down the dimly, bluely lit and
fairly unpopulated street. I saw a piece of paper
half-taped on the sidewalk, and I picked it up
and read it.
It said, in scrawled children’s handwriting,
“fRee pUPeT ShAw,” which I interpreted to
mean, “Free Puppet Show." Intriguing, I
thought.
After reading the announcement, I looked
up and saw a man walking his dog stop on a
small patch of grass not far from where I was
standing. The dog, a sleek-skinny greyhound,
perched all four of its feet close together and
balanced himself as he released his gift to the
earth. The owner, at the end of the leash, was
Brandon
Rogers
looking away.
Spellbound, I looked back at the amateur
sign in my hand: Free Puppet Show. Some pup
pet show, I thought, folding the sheet of paper
and putting it in my pocket.
That made my day.
During the week this quarter, I live over an
hour away from Athens, near where I’m doing
my student-teaching. It gets lonely when the
students go home, when I’m left with papers to
grade, lesson plans to make and naps to take. I
have to get out in public and let these little
things keep me sane, and they always do.
Last week, I was driving home (or what I
call “home" during the week: a friend of my
brother’s parents’ house) and saw that I was
going to get caught in rush-hour traffic, so I
pulled over at the first shopping center. I found
a Baskin-Robbins to sit in so I could kill an
hour, grading papers and reading while the
traffic fizzled out.
A little girl’s voice in the booth behind me
woke me out of my grading trance, and I eaves
dropped.
She was talking to her mother about conve
nience store gas stations and her theories
about why they stay open all night. Her voice
was like a sweet miniature librarian’s voice,
and I could tell she was probably missing her
two front teeth. She was probably six or seven.
Gas stations stay open all night for two rea
sons, she explained to her mother. The first
reason she was pretty positive about, but the
second she was only kinda positive about.
“Okay,” she said. “People that have to drive
at night might need gas in the middle of the
night ’cause they forgot to get gas in the day
time. That’s one reason.”
I had my head turned to the left to hear her
better, so that my ear would face her voice. My
face, consequently, faced the Baskin-Robbins
employees who must’ve thought I was blatantly
staring at them.
“The second reason I’m not sure about, but I
think it’s ’cause if gas stations don’t stay open
all night, then people won’t have anyone to pay
when they put gas in their cars." Her voice got
matter-of-factly higher pitched. “So if the peo
ple aren’t working at the gas station at night,
they might come back in the morning and find
out that they’re out of gas."
Her theories weren’t anything spectacular
— no new insight or anything — but it made
me happy anyway. It was like being included in
a slice of life I never experience and discovering
that interesting and entertaining crispness.
We’re all always so in the middle of things,
so tuned out. It’s nice to step back and tune in.
It’s those little things, you know?
— Brandon Rogers is an entertainment
writer for The Red and Black.
Durham’s column misleading
■ FORUM
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newspaper and its readers.
I felt compelled to address my
concerns and questions with re
gard to the opinions expressed in
Shawn Durham’s April 29 column
entitled “My Various Reflections
on Items in the News.”
The insinuation made in
Durham’s column is anti-Semitic,
ignorant, irresponsible and mis
leading. He writes in reference to
comments made by Marlon
Brandon on Larry King Live,
“Brando surely knows about the
inside structure of Hollywood and
when you look at the structure of
decision-making in La La Land,
there are many persons of Jewish
decent (Eisner, Katsenberg,
Geffen, Spielberg, Tisch, Levin
and so on)."
Has Shawn been privileged to
witness first-hand the decision
making structure in Hollywood? If
so how, does it exclude minority
filmmakers? What does Marlon
Brando really know about the in
side of Hollywood?
Durham’s next comment re
veals that he considers Hollywood
to be owned, operated and con
trolled by Jews. His evidence for
this is, of course, that all of these
Hollywood producers have Jewish
names. He states, “The bottom line
in Hollywood is power." He then
goes on to discuss how Spielberg
had enough clout to have
“Shindler s List" produced, but
Tim Reid’s “Once Up on a Time
When We Were Colored", could not
get to the big screen.
The implication is that
Spielberg, because he is a Jew, got
his movie made and that Reid, be
cause he is an African-American,
could not. This type of logic is
short-sighted and faulty.
Did Durham consider that
Spielberg has directed several of
the top-grossing movies of all
time?
Oliver Stone, Ron Howard,
Brian De Palma, and Spike Lee
seem to have no difficulty having
their films produced. The con
tention that Hollywood is owned
by Jews is classic stereotypical
and anti-Semitic rhetoric. Durham
seems perplexed at the reaction
from Jewish leaders for Brando’s
comments, yet he is guilty of the
same ignorance. It is disturbing
that the education chairman of the
campus NAACP would be so mis
informed and uneducated. It is
even more disturbing that he
would feel so comfortable perpetu
ating this stereotype. Shawn
Durham should apologize for his
comments and write articles that
are substantive and entertaining,
not bigoted and incorrect.
David Katz
Senior, Political Science