Administrators to review race as part of admissions process

How about the university focus on the fact that 3 students HAVE DIED IN THE LAST COUPLE WEEKS? This is outrageous. I don’t care if they are all drug induced, alcohol related, or due to negligence on the part of the student, there’s no way that this many students should be DYING. Something is going on, and the university should be investigating it. I don’t know what the ELPD and campus police are even paid for.

If you have been paying attention to the news you would have seen that all three deaths are pending autopsy results and are still under investigation. This isn’t la-la-land CSI, it is real life when death investigations can take time and are not wrapped up in an hour like on TV. Once the autopsy results are in, hopefully the E.Lansing and Lansing Police (none of these students have died ON campus)will release their findings and give any personal safety related messages along with them that may be appropriate.

The University administration is going to use “recruitment tools” meaning scholarships coming from our tuition dollars to bring in more minority students. That sounds a tad racist to me. Let’s use tuition dollars to give scholarships to white students. Geez, doesn’t sound right does it? Sounds racist, huh? I assume that the fact they will be recruiting more minorities means that they will be lowering the standards as well, since after all these students must not be qualified enough to make it in at the current standards or else they’d would be there already. Hmmm, seems to me we are devaluing the merit of minorities and over valuing their presence on campus. Why don’t we just act this adults and all be miserable together regardless of creed. That’s what the “real world” is going to be like anyway. Unemployment and misery does not sort out people based on race.

Why do you want people in the Admissions Office to review off-campus student deaths?

The idea that race should play any part in the college admissions process is completely ludicrous. The most qualified applicants should get in, regardless of economic background, social standing, and most of all race.

Fuck everything about this.

As a minority student at this school, I was not given a free pass into MSU. I had to work hard to get here! So please, dont act like all of us minorities are a sore on your foot!

I agree that race should not be a factor and I see a LOT of black students who go to this school who do not value it! If admissions is going to consider socioeconomic status or geography for admissions, they should atleast still take the best students from that pool and not just students they feel they could help or at risk.

Even though I am not rich like many of the white students who go here and I didnt get handed most of my opportunities, that does not mean I do not deserve to be here. If I worked hard and got in through regular admissions, dont insult me by saying YOUR tuition is going towards helping someone like me get a free ride into college.

Thats bullshit.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. – Martin Luther King Jr.

Apparently Michigan State University didn’t get the memo that if you want true racial equality men or women will not be admitted to a university based on his or her color.

I view black people as equals to everyone else in society. However, once they start getting special privileges for being black they are not equal. If they get extra points on a test for being black that is just a slap in the face to black people. Why you ask? Because that is like saying black people are inferior to other races because they are not capable of doing as good on a test as other races.

I do not believe black people are inferior to other races. I believe that the best and smartest people not based on color should be rewarded in life no matter if they are Asian, Black, White, Hispanic, or Indian. If you want racial equality you don’t push for affirmative action.

So, according to the admissions data you posted, minorities comprise 42% of the incoming class (if you include international students) or 27% (excluding international students).

Considering that Michigan’s minority population is only 24% (according to the 2010 US Census), this is already 3 percentage points above that without including the additional 15 percentage points of diversity brought by international students. All without considering race in the admissions process.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/26000.html
(US Census Link for MI)

Regardless of how you feel about this divisive issue, it seems extremely arrogant that a senior administrator is openly flaunting the State Constitution and results of a democratic election…

“…MSU still has to work around the ban, Granberry Russell said.”

I just want to start out by saying that if you worked hard, and deserve to be here, then you aren’t the type of person that everyone frustrations are directed at.
That being said:
Really? You aren’t rich like most of the white students here? I think we all know what demographic on campus has the most money, but if we aren’t calling them out by name so be it. I just know how many BMW, Porche, and Audi’s i would see outside of mcdonel hall when i lived there.
I’m also confused by your wording, are you implying that because a student is white they got their opportunities handed to them? Because that would just be ignorant.

Amen Kate. We forget the flip side of stories like this. I recently read that Asian-Americans have to score a 1550 on their SATs to have equal chance of getting into an elite colleges as African-Americans with a score of 1100. Think about that – we are actively keeping some of our best students our of our best colleges, in the interest of diversity. What crazy guy first decided that might be a good idea?

I am just saying that I deserve to be here are much as anyone else. A previous poster was talking about minorities as if we are all welfare cases that need to be taken care of by the paying students and parents at this University which I am sure are probably mostly white and asian. I just dont like people acting like minorities are a thorn in their side, I dont need any special treatment because I am black…I go to school like everyone else and I worked for my spot here…and sure, I am not privledged, I dont have money and I grew up in a single family household….maybe MSU took my economic status and the fact that I am from Detroit into account when letting me go here. However, regardless of all those things, I still met admissions requirements and It wasnt an affirmative action thing.

We do not live in a race-blind society. The U.S. is one of the least economically mobile countries in the industrialized world despite what popular opinion asserts; you cannot deny that wealth concentrates at the top in the U.S. no matter what your stance is on income inequality. And not surprisingly, one of the major driving factors in wealth concentration between the rich and poor is the disparity of education between the two. The fact is, communities with lower incomes tend to have large minority populations, making race an issue in poverty and educational access.

This is not necessarily an argument for affirmative action – I just want to clarify that the university is not trying to ignore the ban on affirmative action. Instead, they are increasing their efforts to recruit students from communities where the options of attending college are not as known. If you are growing up in a community where your family is impoverished, no one has attended college, and your friends and neighbors aren’t thinking of college – it makes it that much harder for one to realize the opportunities that college can give you. MSU outreach to these communities is not about letting unqualified kids get in. It is about reaching out a hand to students who are intelligent and hardworking but otherwise wouldn’t think of college as a possibility to begin with, who don’t have the family/friends/support systems to walk students through the admissions process and tell them about all the great things that college can offer.

“Reviewing race as part of the admissions process” is not about letting unqualified minorities into the university without examining their qualifications. But it is about the moral duty of a public educational institution to be a university for everyone who fits its academic standards, making race and low income levels(both historical barriers to educational access) more of a non-issue.

Well we will never live in a race blind society if we continue to make decisions based off of race.

Pathetic. Here we go again. Get over it already please. Admission to MSU (or any major university) should be based on merit period. Grades and effort are a major deciding factor not “race.” Affirmative action is a thing of the past and in most cases has been severely abused. If you don’t have the grades then you shouldn’t get in until you do have the grades (i.e community college first if need be). If the president of MSU is going to implement this kind of stuff then she needs to go. I mean look at who sits on the board of MSU. It is a novel right out of Detroit, one member even has affiliation with Jesse Jackson (the guy worked on his campaign, I wonder where this new incentive for race based admissions is coming from? Come on. I know a number of African Americans and hispanics that made it in to MSU on hard work and merit. Keep it that way! To do otherwise is a disservice to every student. No hate here…if you deserve to be here that is awesome…if not, it is a disservice and a slap in the face to all those that did bust their butts to get here. I would rather make it on merit…than take a hand out and fail out later in the semester because I couldn’t handle the work.

Cool! Now more minorities will have access to a giant piece of toilet paper that takes them 4 years and $50,000 to obtain!