GreatLakeState
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From Petoskey News-Review:
When cats and dogs start plotting together, the mice better be on the
lookout. First it was gubernatorial candidates Jennifer Granholm and Dick
DeVos who came out against the Nov. 7 ballot Proposal 2 ("a proposal to
amend the state constitution to ban affirmative action programs that give
preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race,
gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment,
education or contracting purposes").
Monday in Okemos there was an even more surprising coalition. Michigan
State's Tom Izzo and Michigan's Tommy Amaker were among five of the
state's college basketball coaches who gathered at a One United Michigan
press conference to come out in favor of racial preferences and
discrimination.
The coaches claimed that they were there as individuals, not as
representatives of their universities. Of course, no one would pay them
the time of day if it were Tom from Iron Mountain and not Tom from
Michigan State.
Motives
Of course, college basketball coaches would seem uniquely qualified to
talk about universities accepting students of questionable academic
credentials. Michigan State had to appeal to the NCAA in order for Jason
Richardson to be able to play as a freshman, just stretching in under the
barest of eligibility standards. Izzo also recruited Zack Randolph, a
convicted gun runner, for a one-year stint in East Lansing.
But when under-educated revenue sports jocks come to MSU, they have
the advantages of a segregated learning environment, the Clara Bell Smith
Center, and a bevy of tutors, which the average minority student doesn't
enjoy. Even with that infrastructure and support, minority athletes at
Michigan State, according to Black Issues in Higher Education, still had
the second-worst graduation rate in the Big Ten. That's little surprise
when one considers that the two factors which the State House
Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education says are the two
clearest determining factors in graduation rates - standardized test
scores and admissions selectivity - are the very factors affirmative action
undermines.
New Central Michigan coach Ernie Zeigler may have tipped the hand to
the true purpose of the coaches' opposition. A former UCLA assistant, he
said that when a similar proposal passed in California, and the number of
unqualified minority students on campus dwindled, the players took
notice. Don't think that other college coaches didn't notice the dearth of
brown faces, too, and use it to recruit against UCLA, a tactic Michigan
coaches can surely envision being adopted by their out-of-state peers
should Proposal 2 pass here.
Colleges will go to great lengths to deceive high school students into the
impression that their campuses are harmonious racial utopias. The
University of Wisconsin Photoshopped into a brochure a black student
into a crowd of white football fans. The University of Idaho's website once
put a black face on he head of a white student. But that's nothing
compared to former Clemson basketball coach Tates Locke, who once
conspired to concoct a fictitious black fraternity on the South Carolina
school's backwater campus.
Perception is king to coaches showing off their schools to prospective
ballplayers. Does it really matter that the previous students, per their
academic records, didn't really belong at UCLA? As long as it looked nice.
Why, all the happy, different-colored young learners on the Westwood
campus, it could be a WB set. Marketed to snowed-in Midwest college
students to vegetate on while consuming over-taxed beer.
Ground zero
Then there's Amaker, product of one brand of affirmative action,
defending another brand. Amaker played and coached under Mike
Krzyzewski, whose Duke program has been the most successful in the
game the last 20 years. Without that affiliation, does anyone really think
Amaker's first head coaching job would have been in the Big East? Or that,
after not distinguishing himself at Seton Hall, he would have gone on to
Michigan? Upon Amaker's hiring at U-M, one of the other candidates,
Kent State's Gary Waters, wondered, What has Tommy Amaker ever done?
Five years, and no NCAA Tournament appearances, later, one still
wonders.
It appears Amaker wants U-M to be as vapid and unsuccessful
academically as his program is athletically.
"I want to be proud of my home as a place that is welcoming to all,"
Amaker said at the press conference. "I'm afraid that if Proposal 2 passes,
it won't seem (emphasis added) that way anymore."
It won't seem, but it will be, open and ready to educate qualified students
regardless of race. That doesn't happen now at the University of
Michigan, where students are treated differently because of their race.
The discrimination is blatant. At U-M's med school, according to the
Center for Equal Opportunity based on data retrieved through the
Freedom of Information Act, applicants with MCAT scores of 41 and gpa's
of 3.6 in their science courses were admitted at rates of 74, 43, 12 and 6
percent, depending on if the applicants were black, Hispanic, white or
Asian, respectively.
Fight the future
"I know what it takes to build a team, and that is diversity," Izzo said. "We
need all kinds of players on our team, and we need all kinds of students
on our campus if we are going to be successful in building the Michigan
of tomorrow."
The diversity of the Michigan State basketball team means mixing a long-
armed shot-blocker, with a stalwart rebounder, with a lights-out shooter,
with a slick ball-handler. I'm sure the professors at these schools would
like to be able to teach only the very best and brightest, like the coaches
are allowed to in their field. But instead, through affirmative action, the
classrooms are degraded by students who are mis-matched with the
universities, creating what economist Thomas Sowell calls artificial failure.
Perhaps Izzo, Amaker, and the rest should embrace true diversity, the
extreme kind they enjoy seeing practiced at the schools at large. Does
Michigan State really need three 6-foot-10 kids? They're not on
scholarship because of ability so much as they benefit from the inherent
advantages of being tall in a game biased against short people. If just
given a chance, short people will be able to succeed on the court. Yeah,
yeah, I know, there's that C+ in 10th-grade p.e. But that's due less to a
lack of intrinsic ability, and more to the lack of emphasis on athletics in
the short community. Drew Naymick, sorry, your scholarship is being
revoked.
Now starting for the Spartans at center, Timmy Tran, the 5-9
Vietnamese-American computer science major. Coach him up, guys!
When cats and dogs start plotting together, the mice better be on the
lookout. First it was gubernatorial candidates Jennifer Granholm and Dick
DeVos who came out against the Nov. 7 ballot Proposal 2 ("a proposal to
amend the state constitution to ban affirmative action programs that give
preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race,
gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment,
education or contracting purposes").
Monday in Okemos there was an even more surprising coalition. Michigan
State's Tom Izzo and Michigan's Tommy Amaker were among five of the
state's college basketball coaches who gathered at a One United Michigan
press conference to come out in favor of racial preferences and
discrimination.
The coaches claimed that they were there as individuals, not as
representatives of their universities. Of course, no one would pay them
the time of day if it were Tom from Iron Mountain and not Tom from
Michigan State.
Motives
Of course, college basketball coaches would seem uniquely qualified to
talk about universities accepting students of questionable academic
credentials. Michigan State had to appeal to the NCAA in order for Jason
Richardson to be able to play as a freshman, just stretching in under the
barest of eligibility standards. Izzo also recruited Zack Randolph, a
convicted gun runner, for a one-year stint in East Lansing.
But when under-educated revenue sports jocks come to MSU, they have
the advantages of a segregated learning environment, the Clara Bell Smith
Center, and a bevy of tutors, which the average minority student doesn't
enjoy. Even with that infrastructure and support, minority athletes at
Michigan State, according to Black Issues in Higher Education, still had
the second-worst graduation rate in the Big Ten. That's little surprise
when one considers that the two factors which the State House
Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education says are the two
clearest determining factors in graduation rates - standardized test
scores and admissions selectivity - are the very factors affirmative action
undermines.
New Central Michigan coach Ernie Zeigler may have tipped the hand to
the true purpose of the coaches' opposition. A former UCLA assistant, he
said that when a similar proposal passed in California, and the number of
unqualified minority students on campus dwindled, the players took
notice. Don't think that other college coaches didn't notice the dearth of
brown faces, too, and use it to recruit against UCLA, a tactic Michigan
coaches can surely envision being adopted by their out-of-state peers
should Proposal 2 pass here.
Colleges will go to great lengths to deceive high school students into the
impression that their campuses are harmonious racial utopias. The
University of Wisconsin Photoshopped into a brochure a black student
into a crowd of white football fans. The University of Idaho's website once
put a black face on he head of a white student. But that's nothing
compared to former Clemson basketball coach Tates Locke, who once
conspired to concoct a fictitious black fraternity on the South Carolina
school's backwater campus.
Perception is king to coaches showing off their schools to prospective
ballplayers. Does it really matter that the previous students, per their
academic records, didn't really belong at UCLA? As long as it looked nice.
Why, all the happy, different-colored young learners on the Westwood
campus, it could be a WB set. Marketed to snowed-in Midwest college
students to vegetate on while consuming over-taxed beer.
Ground zero
Then there's Amaker, product of one brand of affirmative action,
defending another brand. Amaker played and coached under Mike
Krzyzewski, whose Duke program has been the most successful in the
game the last 20 years. Without that affiliation, does anyone really think
Amaker's first head coaching job would have been in the Big East? Or that,
after not distinguishing himself at Seton Hall, he would have gone on to
Michigan? Upon Amaker's hiring at U-M, one of the other candidates,
Kent State's Gary Waters, wondered, What has Tommy Amaker ever done?
Five years, and no NCAA Tournament appearances, later, one still
wonders.
It appears Amaker wants U-M to be as vapid and unsuccessful
academically as his program is athletically.
"I want to be proud of my home as a place that is welcoming to all,"
Amaker said at the press conference. "I'm afraid that if Proposal 2 passes,
it won't seem (emphasis added) that way anymore."
It won't seem, but it will be, open and ready to educate qualified students
regardless of race. That doesn't happen now at the University of
Michigan, where students are treated differently because of their race.
The discrimination is blatant. At U-M's med school, according to the
Center for Equal Opportunity based on data retrieved through the
Freedom of Information Act, applicants with MCAT scores of 41 and gpa's
of 3.6 in their science courses were admitted at rates of 74, 43, 12 and 6
percent, depending on if the applicants were black, Hispanic, white or
Asian, respectively.
Fight the future
"I know what it takes to build a team, and that is diversity," Izzo said. "We
need all kinds of players on our team, and we need all kinds of students
on our campus if we are going to be successful in building the Michigan
of tomorrow."
The diversity of the Michigan State basketball team means mixing a long-
armed shot-blocker, with a stalwart rebounder, with a lights-out shooter,
with a slick ball-handler. I'm sure the professors at these schools would
like to be able to teach only the very best and brightest, like the coaches
are allowed to in their field. But instead, through affirmative action, the
classrooms are degraded by students who are mis-matched with the
universities, creating what economist Thomas Sowell calls artificial failure.
Perhaps Izzo, Amaker, and the rest should embrace true diversity, the
extreme kind they enjoy seeing practiced at the schools at large. Does
Michigan State really need three 6-foot-10 kids? They're not on
scholarship because of ability so much as they benefit from the inherent
advantages of being tall in a game biased against short people. If just
given a chance, short people will be able to succeed on the court. Yeah,
yeah, I know, there's that C+ in 10th-grade p.e. But that's due less to a
lack of intrinsic ability, and more to the lack of emphasis on athletics in
the short community. Drew Naymick, sorry, your scholarship is being
revoked.
Now starting for the Spartans at center, Timmy Tran, the 5-9
Vietnamese-American computer science major. Coach him up, guys!
