Affirmative action doesn’t treat
issue
Mike Bitondo’s pro-affirmative action column,
“Affirmative action needed to balk segregation” (May
21), misses the heart of the issue. Affirmative action might be an
appropriate choice ““ if minority students were being denied
admission because of their race ““ but this is clearly not the
situation. Students are rejected due to insufficient academic
merit.
To use a medical analogy, affirmative action could be compared
to “treating the symptom and not the cause.” The
symptom is inadequate minority representation at the university
level, but the cause of the problem lies in an ailing public school
system. Affirmative action might help a handful of minority
students, but will do nothing for successive generations that will
continue to receive poor educations. This problem will not be
solved until the government and people of this country are prepared
to spend the money needed to repair our nation’s school
system from the bottom up.
Bitondo repeatedly criticizes a “colorblind admissions
policy,” but isn’t the goal of racial equality to
arrive at a place where color truly does not matter? The real
victims in this struggle are not simply racial minorities, but
students in low-income areas who receive an inadequate education,
regardless of color. Giving black or latino students extra
privileges not shared by their white and Asian classmates will not
solve anything. These students need to be educated in a manner that
allows them to realize their full academic potential.
Seth Jobin
Second-year, English
Average sorority GPA misleading
It seems that there is controversy over the “C’est
la Vie” cartoon printed in the May 15 issue of the Daily
Bruin, as brought up by a group of UCLA students who wrote some
disparaging things about “C’est la Vie” and its
author Jennifer Babcock in a letter to the editor titled,
“Sororities wrongly bashed in cartoon” (May 22).
The writers accuse “Babs” (a name I assume is
intentionally used as a put down) of having some false journalistic
intention, when clearly the cartoon is anything but editorial in
content. Perhaps the authors of that letter should learn a bit
about journalism, or, if anything, drop their obvious pretensions,
lest the pot be accused of calling the kettle black.
Furthermore, while I do not wish to put down the academic
achievement of any person associated with a Greek organization, it
must be noted that the statement regarding the relative GPA of
sorority members compared to the rest of the female population of
UCLA is misleading. In so far as only a 12 percent minority of UCLA
students are involved in Greek life, to brag about an average
improvement of a mere 10th of a point in overall GPA is
disingenuous to the point.
While any improvement in GPA is a good thing, such small average
improvements in GPA are best noted with faint praise and not
indecorously used as a means of touting the benefits of Greek life
or ego-inflation at the expense of others.
David C. Blocker
Los Angeles, CA