I recently attended a seminar on Affirmative Action, where Associate Dean and Smeal Professor Gus Colangelo tried to set straight any assumptions many of us have regarding Affirmative Action Policy. For those of you who live under a rock and have never heard of Affirmative Action, it is a policy established to ensure that underrepresented minorities (including women, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, etc.) are given their fair chance in the workplace and at college. This doesn’t mean that less qualified minorities are given jobs that should go to more qualified white men. In fact, just the opposite occurs. A study was done comparing the entrance MCAT scores of accepted Med School Students at Yale University. Originally, there was an unwritten rule that women could not be admitted into Yale. After some time, policy was established to ensure that women were considered for admission. The lowest MCAT score of a med student admitted into Yale after the establishment of this policy was considerably higher than when it was a “white men only club”. This indicates that ensuring minorities are represented actually increases competition and means we’ll have better doctors, lawyers, etc.
Gus wanted to firmly establish that Affirmative Action doesn’t lead to preferential treatment of minorities. He mentioned numerous occasions when someone had made a comment to him that “she only got that job because she was a women/black/Asian/etc.), and that those people are just sore losers, trying to justify being declined anyway they can. I encourage you all to take a closer look at Affirmative Action policy, and get the big picture of what it’s trying to accomplish.