Students march for rights

In response to mounting concerns with college admissions policies and programs designed for minorities, about 40 MIT students marched from their student union to the Harvard Bridge yesterday in support of affirmative action.

With the Supreme Court poised to decide the legality of race-conscious college admissions this spring, many students are taking action to call for diversity.

‘We stand firmly in support of affirmative action,’ said Ayanna Samuels, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ‘It is only with a coalition that we can rise from the dark depths of racism and better the social fabric of America. We should seek to fix America’s educational system.’

According to MIT’s Black Student Organization, affirmative action policies require that active measures be taken to ensure that minorities including women can enjoy the same opportunities for promotions, salary increases, career advancement, school admissions and financial aid that have been the nearly exclusive province of whites.

In her speech before the march, Terry Garcia, president of MIT’s Society of Hispanic Engineers, stressed that women and minorities are still being underpaid compared to their white counterparts. In higher education and in the workforce, large disparities exist between underrepresented minorities and non-minorities, she said.

‘Even the course of four decades has not realized Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of equality,’ she said. ‘Social injustice is not a dysfunction of the past, but a tragedy of today. Sentiments of discrimination have not changed.’

In the 1978 case, California Regents v. Bakke, the Supreme Court invalidated racial quotas in college admissions, but left the door open for schools to consider race as a factor when admitting students.

Two years ago, two conservative advocacy groups, the Center for Equal Opportunity and the American Civil Rights Institute, sent a letter to MIT arguing that the school was breaking the law by limiting its summer sessions to minority students.

Investigations by the federal Office for Civil Rights drove MIT to change the minority-only admission policy for two of its summer programs that focus on math and science. MIT said it will open the programs, originally created for only African-American, Hispanic and Native American students, to all high school students, according to The Boston Globe.

Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs also decided to drop the minority-only policy for its Junior Summer Institute. According to the Globe, they were approached by the same anti-affirmative action groups that challenged MIT.

Kafetta Coleman, head of MIT’s BSO, expressed frustration with the lack of support for affirmative action on campus.

‘Too many people get their priorities mixed up,’ she said. ‘Students worry about problem sets; I worry about my community back home filled with crack houses. I am not an activist, I am not a politician, but this is an issue that affects all of us. I stand here for all those who have fought for civil rights.’

A dozen Democratic senators, including Edward Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts, submitted a legal brief to the Supreme Court on Feb. 19 supporting affirmative action in admissions at the University of Michigan, whose policies are being challenged in two cases before the court.

‘If race could not be considered consciously, minorities would not be represented here,’ said Julie Peterson, spokeswoman for admissions at Michigan. ‘That would impoverish the students’ learning experience.’

Harvard, MIT, large corporations, members of the House of Representatives and retired military officials also signed briefs in support of Michigan’s policies.

Charles Vest, president of MIT, said in a statement on Feb. 14 that diversity in the workforce is essential to the future economic strength of America.

‘The quality of education across this galaxy of schools is enhanced by the diversity of their student bodies,’ he said. ‘And this diversity in turn reflects our national character and serves our country by helping to build a coherent society and a strong economic future.’

University of Michigan President Sue Coleman said she agreed that strength seeks diversity in her Feb. 17 address to the American Council on Education.

‘Students learn better in a diverse class,’ she said. ‘They are more analytical, and more engaged. The teaching environment is more enlightening. The discussion is livelier and more representative of real-world issues. These students are more open to perspectives that differ from their own and they are better prepared to become active participants in our society.’

Vest said the suits brought against Michigan are threatening.

‘[They] do not merely threaten some technical detail in their processes for admitting students,’ he said. ‘They threaten the quality of education in all of our institutions. They threaten the freedom, flexibility and robustness of American higher education. They threaten our ability to serve our nation and its future well.’

Coleman agreed, saying without Bakke she fears that selective universities in most parts of the country would re-segregate. She argued that the university must choose among many more qualified applicants than it can accept, so it attempts to build a class that is diverse in all ways.

‘Yes, we consider race in choosing our entering class each year, and we consider a host of other factors as well,’ she said. ‘Our policies are moderate, fair and carefully considered, and designed to achieve the diversity we feel is critical without jeopardizing our high academic standards or creating disadvantage for other important factors.’

Boston University also values affirmative action policies, according to the university’s equal opportunity officer, Kim Randall.

The BU Office of Equal Opportunity ‘is primarily responsible for ensuring that the university’s active commitment to equal opportunity and affirmative action is realized, and that the university maintains compliance with all federal, state and local laws pertaining to equal opportunity and affirmative action,’ according to its website.

Michigan and other schools and advocates are awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court. In her address, Coleman pleaded with her audience to maintain quality and diversity in major institutions.

‘We are asking the United States Supreme Court not to turn back the clock because our country depends on the education and the integration that we worked so hard as a nation to achieve and that in many ways defines our greatness as a society,’ she said.

At MIT’s march yesterday, Dean Ayida Mthembu said affirmative action is about wrongs that have not been addressed.

‘Affirmative action means positive action to address wrongs that have existed for a long time,’ she said. ‘This is about people who are not doing the right thing and who need to be forced to do so by laws.’