Thursday, October 24, 1996
Oh the injustice!
To Chancellors Tien and Young, regarding your Proposition 209
announcement on 10/20/96 (Daily Bruin, 10/21/96):
This week my calculus students at UCLA will take their first
exam. In addition to the usual questions, I plan to ask them their
ethnicity. Then, after grading the exam, if I find that certain
minorities (to be chosen by me) have averaged lower than the rest
of the class, I plan to award them extra points. This is intended
to compensate for deficiencies in their pre-college math
preparation, and also to promote diversity, particularly among
math, science and engineering majors.
Absurd? Illegal? But my plan is modeled on the admissions policy
practiced by UCB and UCLA in recent years! (UC release,
10/1/96).
I do dearly hope that the UC can be representative of California
and the nation, and I may yet decide to vote against Proposition
209 (or at least abstain). But first I need to hear a compelling
reason to do so, based upon unassailable fact and clear logic, not
some high-minded appeal to nebulous concepts like diversity and
equal opportunity/affirmative action.
So far I haven’t heard anything to cause me to vote in favor of
combating one injustice with an equivalent injustice, one which I
consider equally repugnant and indefensible.
Robert D. Edwards
Professor of Mathematics, UCLA