It’s not often that our polarized society is able to reach a consensus on contentious issues. As much as I may enjoy the occasional divergence into political hackery, I find greater satisfaction in seeing people from across the political spectrum unite around a principled stance based on solid facts rather than emotion and sentiment. To that end, I’ve been reassured by the countless notes of encouragement I’ve received from people of varying ideologies who are in agreement that RPI desperately needed to hear the statement that the last College Republicans column made: The manic obsession with race on this campus isn’t doing anyone here or anywhere else an ounce of good, and it’s time we talked about it.
While the positive feedback has been plentiful, I remain surprised that a student club is taking heat because it is calling for colorblindness when the people responsible for admissions think that students with a certain skin color are actually threatened by being held to the same admission standards as others. This tells society that it’s acceptable to look down on minorities, but it’s not okay to talk about it. I remember hearing about a similar policy in Germany; perhaps this is part of a strategy to eventually open “diversity camps.”
On a national level, this situation represents more than a debate about the necessity of a policy. There exists a culture of condescension that threatens the very fabric of the scientific community by putting a question mark above anyone for whom a preference system might exist. What if racial preferences had been in place when Dr. Charles Drew developed the protocol for the blood bank in the 1940s? Could people have written off his presence at Columbia and denied him the ability to develop a technology that has saved millions of lives? Are we prepared to risk having the person who could otherwise develop cold fusion or cure cancer be dismissed as the product of a bankrupt racial policy? We owe it to society as a whole and to the countless men and women who happen to fall under the ugly umbrellas of these programs to let them shine and have their performances judged on their merits alone.
Meanwhile, the argument that RPI itself must artificially maintain a certain level of diversity remains as baseless as ever; RPI’s duty to society is to make engineers, not to make people into engineers. Consumers don’t care about the skin color of the person who designed their car, or their prosthetic knee, or their computer software. The same argument that is being made in favor of lowering standards based on skin color can be used to make the case for lowering them to admit squirrels. Ask yourself: Do you have any squirrels in your department? Have you taken those diverse life experiences of squirrels into consideration during your scientific efforts? People from certain parts of the country have never been in a classroom with a squirrel before, and their capacities as engineers have certainly been affected. If you don’t want to make a big deal about the number of squirrels on campus, then you’re obviously discriminating against them. And let’s not forget, if we’re going to truly promote this absolutely necessary squirrel population on campus, we’d best let them form their own group to advance the squirrel culture, because RPI just wouldn’t be the same without one.
Editor’s Note: “The Elephant’s Peanut Gallery” and “Straight from the Ass’s Mouth” run biweekly and are opinion columns granted by the Editorial Board to the College Republicans and the College Democrats.
