[1417] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
military AA [Re: Wither MIT's AA? [re: Chronicle article]]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jimmy C Wu)
Tue Jun 24 18:22:23 2003
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 17:24:41 -0400
From: Jimmy C Wu <jimmbswu@ALUM.MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
For further clarification, the military Affirmative Action promotion boards
works something like this:
All officers are divided into qualified and not qualified. Then, a
promotion board convenes to decide who among the qualified gets promoted and
who doesn't. An AA person then reviews the number of ppl promoted to see if
the percentage of promoted minority officers differ substantially from the
percentage of *qualified* minority officers. If there is a significant
difference, then the board chairman has to justify in writing this
difference.
The primary difference this system has versus other AA system is that you
are measuring against the qualified percentage, not the overall percentage.
Say, for example, 10% of all officers are black, while 12% of all qualified
officers are black. Then we expect 12% of promoted officers to be black.
Adapting this system into the MIT system, if 3% of the top 40% applicants
are black, and 11% of the overall applicant pool are black, then the
admission office makes sure that approx. 3% of the admitted applicants are
black, not 11%.
So that was that,
Jimmy Wu
----- Original Message -----
From: "Prez H. Cannady" <revprez@MIT.EDU>
To: "Jacob W Faber" <j_faber@MIT.EDU>; <MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 2:07 PM
Subject: Re: Wither MIT's AA? [re: Chronicle article]
> At 09:21 AM 6/24/03, Jacob W Faber wrote
>
> >Notes on Affirmative Action: Points are not directly given based on
race,
> >gender, ethnicity, geography, etc. as in the U. Mich. case. The places
where
> >AA comes in to play are as following:
> >1)recruitment or applicants
> >2)if a minority candidate is rejected in the first review of applications
> >(where 60% of all applications are denied), the application is reviewed
by
> >Lorelle Espinosa, who works for Admissions.
>
>
> I just talk to a Denise in Lorelle Espinosa's office. Apparantly
> applications undergo through reviews. After that, Ms. Espinosa reruns
> minority applicants to ensure "nothing's been missed." I'm not sure how
> well documented this process is, but it sounds a lot like what service
> promotion boards do--give extra consideration to minority candidates to
> ensure that no bias interfered with their capacity to compete. Now refer
> back to the briefs submitted by CEO and CIR and you'll see not even the
> plaintiffs argued that due diligence given to minority applicants is
> unconstitutional. It's the "point of competition," where a racial "plus"
> can only be given as a determining factor, that they had a problem with.
>
> I think if you read the Gratz and Grutter decisions together, you can find
> an implicit rejection of common notion of race as a "plus"
> factor. Ultimately, the only affirmative action system endorsed by the
> nexus of these two opinions is that practiced in the military--where race
> plays a role only to ensure similar attention has been given to all
> applicants in the face of past racial discrimination.
>
> The next round of litigation (which could start today) will undoubtedly
> address those facts submitted without dispute into the record.
>
> Rev Prez
>
> P.H. Cannady
> revprez@mit.edu
> (617) 452 4470
> Sidney Pacific Dorm
> 70 Pacific St
> Cambridge 02139
>
>
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