Monday, 7/21/97 Letters
Justice at last After seeing the numbers of fall admissions in
the UC system, I have come to one conclusion: All those years of
affirmative action did nothing. What is usually ignored is that
while "minority" admissions decreased at UCLA and at Berkeley, they
increased at UC Riverside and other UC schools. The reason that the
Berkeley law school will have no new African American students is
because African Americans and others have been unfairly frightened
by so-called and self-declared ethnic leaders who have lied to
them, as well as the fact that those who where admitted choose to
not come here, showing exactly who favors the "new segregation"
being touted lately. Let us remember that the the number of white
and Asian acceptances shows the number of whites and Asians who
were previously denied admission under affirmative action just
because of the color of their skin. Daniel B. Rego Sophomore
Political Science One league just wouldn’t work Though I think many
things Rocky Salmon mentioned in his column, "Talented women
deserve equal play," were unfounded, I’ll just discuss a couple of
things. I was an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University from
1990-1994. The Vanderbilt men’s basketball team usually gets into
the NIT if not the NCAA tournament, while the women’s basketball
team is usually an NCAA title contender. Guess what? Almost all of
the men’s games are sellouts, and the basketball band (I was a
member) plays at every single men’s home game. Neither is true at
women’s games – attendance is usually below 1,000 and the
basketball band only comes when we play Tennessee (another highly
ranked women’s team). A little research would show that such
abysmal attendance at top-64 women’s games is the rule, and not the
exception. So Salmon’s comment that people "do not attend games
because of gender; they attend because the team is winning" is not
true. Also, Salmon’s plan to marginalize the exceptional women
athletes in the NBA is naive, for several reasons. It might be true
that many women prefer playing basketball with other women, as many
men prefer playing with other men, exclusively. Moreover, the
average height of an NBA player is probably a foot taller than the
average height of a female player. Such a height discrepancy, in
basketball, makes a huge difference even if the players are all
men. So not having a separate women’s league would easily shut out
almost all the talented women players who want to play pro ball
(for other reasons as well). The point of creating women’s leagues
is so that women can get to play pro ball, fans get to enjoy
watching, and owners make huge profits. This is hardly accomplished
if only a handful of infinitely exceptional women players get to
play in an almost exclusive male club, and owners make huge
profits. Now to make things worse, Salmon says, "Don’t you think
that if Jerry West thought that Rebecca Lobo could help the Lakers
he would sign her?" Note that this is not the same as saying "If
Rebecca Lobo could play ball as well as most Laker team members, do
you think Jerry West would sign her?" It is amazing that Salmon
expects an economic system, in one fell swoop, to cure all the
obstacles which prevent talented women players from getting the
same salaries as similarly talented men. Now I expect you editors
to invite someone to give an alternate viewpoint to Salmon’s
article. It is only fair. Especially since the title of the column
is so misleading. Regis Smith Graduate Student Mathematics