Why+do+school+admissions+care+about+diversity?

Almost everyone has heard of affirmative action. If you haven't, affirmative action is when schools reject or accept different people based on their race or ethnicity to ensure equal opportunity. But is it equal opportunity? Why do school admissions care about rejecting or accepting certain people? Is there a good reason for this? like education purposes? or just to look good instead of accidentally discriminating? These questions are some that i know that people should be aware of when thinking about affirmative action.

What happened to spark everything about affirmative action in a long time and to start to get people discussing it? On June 23, 2003, there was the first ruling of affirmative action in 25 years, the Grutter vs. Bollinger case. The highest court ruled that following Monday that race can be used as a factor in admissions to universities at other schools. But why would admissions take race into an account? Why would they take it into account if there is supposedly nothing different between all of us? According to an article written by Mo Yin S. Tam and Gilbert W. Bassett Jr., “action in university admissions is the claim that a diverse student body creates a beneficial learning environment”. So that is one reason why affirmative action is such a big thing, is somehow creates a better learning environment, but how? A diverse student body apparently benefits minorities and non-minorities, it helps prepare them for “real life” where they will encounter different races everywhere they go and work. Aside from helping students prepare for their life beyond college, there are many other reasons why admissions offices use affirmative action. A study by Patricia Gurin in 1999 said that “students learn more and think in deeper, more complex ways in a diverse educational environment." She also stated that students "who experienced the most racial and ethnic diversity in classroom settings and in informal interactions with peers showed the greatest engagement in active thinking processes, growth in intellectual engagement and motivation, and growth in intellectual and academic skills”. These are some of the main reasons that affirmative action has taken place through time.

I got to do something exciting, I got to have a discussion with Denise Goodman, the Director of Admissions at Cary Academy. I had e-mailed Ms. Goodman and had asked her personally if she thought about race in the acceptance process and if she had, why? She responded with a few reasons, all of which sound probable to me. She explained to me that ethnicity was part of the consideration process of accepting students although she assured me that it was not all that was taken into account. She said to me that Cary Academy is meant to educate the students to become leaders and to become leaders, she feels a need to teach students at Cary Academy how to interact with ethnicities other than themselves. Also, she stated that interacting in a diverse environment enhances the learning experience because the students can learn from people that are not like themselves. It was a great opportunity to talk one on one with a person who has to actually perform affirmative action; to get her side of things was great.

All in all, affirmative action is a policy that seeks to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity. Affirmative action is something that goes on in almost all admissions to any school that a person can apply to. There are reasons to why affirmative action is performed and they are mainly that the diverse environment helps prepare students for the real world and helps them interact with people of another minority. Also, it enhances the learning experience because you can learn a lot from people that aren’t like you.

Where I would like to go from here is actually much related. I want to go more into who benefits from affirmative action and who is hurt the most. This is going to be very interesting because I was wondering if affirmative action was created by someone who is sort of racist or someone who felt bad for the minorities and wanted a way to get them into college.



This photo was made in 2003 and I think it represents affirmative action perfectly. http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/mawong/modelminority/affirmativeaction.html

AnnBibWilson