I attended UCLA at the height of the Affirmative Action Program.  Let me explain to you how Affirmative Action worked back then.  My best friend and I attended Santa Monica High School and we both applied to UCLA.  I worked my butt off to earn a 3.9 GPA and a very good SAT score.  He coasted to a 3.2 GPA and an average SAT score.  He is African American and I am not.  He was accepted to UCLA and I was not.  Does that sound fair to you?

I realize that the purpose of Affirmative Action is to both level the playing field and to make up for past wrongs but at what cost?  Does denying a worthy applicant admission to a school really make up for past wrongs to a group of people?  I understand that certain groups of people may struggle more than others.  Maybe they have to work after school, attend inferior schools or are raised below the poverty line but does that mean we should assume that it applies to everyone within that group of people. What I do not like about Affirmative Action is that it ASSUMES that a person fits one or more of these criteria (afterschool job, poverty, inferior school...) due to the fact that they are of a certain ethnicity.  I would fully support a program in which students are asked: "Do you work after school?" or  "What is your family income?" and then they receive credit based on that answer instead of a program that ASSUMES that because you are African American you fit that criteria.  My friend did not work after school, he lived in a million dollar house and went to an excellent school but the Affirmative Action program did not ask or consider any of this, they saw the ethnicity box and assumed the rest.

Another thing that the Affirmative Action program did was admit students who may not have the skills necessary to compete and succeed at that level.  If the students admitted by Affirmative Action are surrounded by students who had significantly better grades and test scores and the professors are grading all students equally, they are already at a distinct disadvantage.  Most schools find that the drop out rate of the Affirmative Action program is three times higher than that of the rest of the student body.  Not only is this unfair to the Affirmative Action program student but it's equally unfair to the student who was denied access to the school to make room for the less qualified student.

Again, I have no problem giving special consideration to individuals who may have had some disadvantages but to assume that an entire group of people is disadvantaged seems to me to be only feeding into the problems and not solving them.

(This story has a happy ending.  The UCLA baseball coach came to see me pitch late into my senior year and got me into UCLA through the athletic program.)