Colleges Promote Diversity, Ideas. Gregory Freeman: P-D 6/4/1995

Headline: COLLEGES PROMOTE DIVERSITY, IDEAS
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Jun. 4, 1995
Section: NEWS, Page: 4B, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

YEARS AGO, WHEN I was a student at Washington University, I occasionally wondered if I were attending school in the Midwest.
Washington University had a large contingent of students from the Northeast in general, and from New York in particular. I don't know how many kids I met who told me that they were from "Loong Guy-land, " but the number was significant. Most of the students at Washington University at that time were from places other than St. Louis. In fact, to provide support to students who were from here, the university helped establish a student group called the "In-Town Students Association."
As a Midwesterner, I found it a good experience to go to school with so many students from other places. Out of the school's diversity, I learned a good deal about how other people lived, thought and went through life. I've maintained some of the friendships I developed with students from other places over the years.

Washington University had clearly decided to take into account geographic location when deciding who would and would not become one of its students. Its leadership apparently considered a body of students from all over the country an asset to the campus.
Did that decision mean that some Midwestern students weren't accepted in favor of some students from elsewhere? Probably, but the university clearly thought that the overall benefit to the student body of having a diverse student body was worth it.

Colleges make those sorts of decisions all the time.
And such decisions are not unlike the affirmative action programs that are under so much fire these days.

Many of the flames are being stoked by politicians who believe they've found a way to make political hay on a divisive issue.
The latest to jump in the fray is Republican Gov. Pete Wilson of California. Wilson has chosen now - after four years of sitting in the governor's mansion - as a good time to curtail affirmative action programs sharply throughout California government. It's only coincidental, we are supposed to believe, that he's running for president now.
Although Wilson's decision will probably have little if any effect on private businesses in California, it will affect the state's public institutions, such as its university system. It will surely bring joy to those who believe that affirmative action programs are some sort of conspiracy against white men. Affirmative action, they argue, is a form of preferential treatment of some over others.

What they often don't think about is that preferential treatment on college campuses is nothing new. I mentioned the geographical diversity issue earlier.
But what about the area of college sports? How many universities regularly recruit athletes, based not on their SAT scores but their ability to sink a ball in a basket or tackle a brawny opponent on the field? That's not called affirmative action, but it's the same thing. Criteria other than scores are looked at as the schools recruit students. The athletes are getting preferential treatment. Yet no one is suggesting that such recruitment be outlawed.
How many students are accepted into colleges because their parents were students there? Many institutions set aside a specific number of slots for children of alumni. Who knows how many non-alumni students were excluded so that children of alums could get in? Yet colleges routinely make room for children of alums, knowing that alumni are often contributors. That kind of affirmative action for alumni offspring helps the universities' bottom line.

While you can hardly expect a program around only 30 years or so to reverse some 200 years of discrimination, there can be no question that affirmative action on college campuses has allowed for greater discourse on a wide range of issues, something that makes colleges special places. It was probably that sort of discourse that allowed me to grow the most while a student. I discussed issues with people who came from an entirely different place than I. I debated with students from different backgrounds whose beliefs had been shaped by the way they had been raised and how their parents had lived their lives.
It was in college that I, the son of a postal worker and a school teacher, was able to exchange ideas with the son of a New York physician, the son of a powerful Peoria, Ill., Republican, the daughter of a conservative California businessman and many others. It was because of the college's belief in diversity, geographic and economic as well as racial and ethnic, that I was able to do that. From those experiences, I learned. I must assume that the other students learned also.

There's great value in such learning experiences. To yank them away in a quest for political brownie points is to do a great disservice to college students, regardless of color.

Gregory Freeman's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday ...

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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