To the Editor:
As an alumnus of RPI, every so often I like to keep abreast of events and topics occurring on campus via the RPI website or the online edition of The Poly. Recently, I was asked by the Alumni Association to serve as an RAA Committee Member, which I enthusiastically accepted because of my fond memories at RPI.
Unlike most people, I have a special connection with the school. I was born across the street at Samaritan Hospital where my father was—and still to this day is—working as one of their chief surgeons. If that was not enough, my older sister and her husband are also alumni of RPI, having both obtained their bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees there in materials engineering. I was only smart enough for the B.S.
With this said, I recently read Mr. Girardin’s articles and chuckled to myself because I thought this sort of backward thinking died back in the 60s.
First, I ask Mr. Girardin to show us the proof that the admissions and quality standards for students and new hires accepted to RPI have actually dropped due to this push for diversification.
Second, I wonder if Mr. Girardin has taken the time to read either Guns, Germs, and Steel, or Freakonomics, rather than Ann Coulter’s or Bill O’Reilly’s latest set of “Misinformation,” because he would realize that intelligence is not merely based on SAT scores and how many AP courses a student takes!
Third, I wonder if Mr. Girardin is covertly advocating the “Race Bell-Curve,” where people are stereotypically fixated by ethnicity or race on a particular portion of a bell curve measuring least to most intelligence. The way you are presenting your arguments now and in past issues of The Poly sounds kind of like it.
Fourth, I wonder how much money Mr. Girardin, or those who supposedly privately endorsed his sentiments, have brought to the Institute as opposed to President Shirley Ann Jackson. I mean, if you can tout to bring as much as she has over the past eight years then I wouldn’t talk, but like the saying goes, “Money Talks and Bullshit Walks” ... You, of course, are part of the latter part of the statement.
Lastly I ask: how many of you have really been adversely affected from the new direction and push for diversity that RPI has undergone? We are all inherently troubled by the whole thought of “change” because it can be a very daunting feeling. But in all honesty, have things gone awry due to diversification?
Is this not one of the main tenets of why America is better than the rest of the world? We are a melting pot of cultures because we stand by the phrase “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Mr. Girardin and his fellow Republicans have a problem when the embodiment of this tenet is applied to a fine institution like RPI, because apparently it would scream “diversity” in an unfavorable manner to the minorities over the majority instead of actually trying to help balance the two groups together as one RPI community.
Nagesh Rao
ALUM ’02
