Sam Everett, Jeremy Sit, Miles Ruder

Mrs. Thomas

UWRT 1104

17 November 2017

Sams Reflection

Early on I changed how the introduction paragraph was written because I felt it was out

of touch with our thesis. The most important consideration we made when writing this thesis, is

the audience. We strived to hit every argument against merit that we could and respond to those

arguments for affirmative action. We mainly revised and reflected while writing this document.

If I were to grade this paper I would give this thesis a 95% because it is well written and we did

spend a lot of time and effort writing it.

Miles Reflection

From the earlier draft, I had to change the way I phrased some of my words because

reading it for a second time made me realize some of my mistakes that I made. Some Student

Learning Outcomes that I used in this thesis was critical reading and critical reflection because

we used both of these in our thesis. If I had to give our thesis a grade, I would give it an A

because we definitely worked hard on this thesis and we wanted to make it as good as possible.

Jeremys Reflection

I changed some things but kept the complexity and integrity of the topic still intact.

SLOs used for me was Rhetorical Thinking because I used situations that may or may not

pertain to our current situation in this point in time. I would give it a 93. Mistakes here and there

but were fixed quickly.

Affirmative Action vs Merit

 The age old question which provides the most equality affirmative action or merit? is a

commonly debated question in the modern world. Merit according to the Cambridge dictionary is

the quality of being good and deserving praise While affirmative action is defined as efforts

to make education and employment available to people who have traditionally been treated

unfairly, by giving them advantages over people who traditionally have been more powerful.

The keyword mentioned here is traditionally, as history demonstrates traditions change all of the

time. Therefore making affirmative action prone to error. What once may have been accepted as

a tradition may not currently be accepted as a tradition. And laws take years or even decades to

implement making the system not in tune with current traditions or bias or even racial

classifications. Consequently these little errors create inequality rather than being a solution to

inequality. Merit, on the other hand, was the adopted system before affirmative action ever came

into existence but affirmative action soon replaced it with prospects of equality. Merit was based

primarily on intellect, and how a student performed. But is performance and intellect really the

best way to judge a students character? If all students suffer from different obstacles caused by

their individual race or social class can performance truly be measured. Is affirmative action

truly better than merit? If it is better, does it generate equality for all or just some? And finally,

is affirmative action the best resolution out there? These are some of the many questions

universities and educators have tried to answer for years. Questions that will be discussed

throughout this thesis and hopefully answered in the conclusion.

Merit has been shown to favor the rich and the educated, because its entire system is

based on competitive scores while affirmative action is based on a student's racial status and their

disadvantages. Instead of being based solely on their academics, students who experience

affirmative action may provide certain individuals with a boost because of their race or gender.
Examples of such boosts are mentioned in the article Benefits of affirmative action in student

affairs written by Logan Patitu and Melvin Terrell. Which lists these benefits the distribution of

funding for mens and womens athletic teams, minority scholarships, training for teachers who

serve minority populations, and government funding. Scholarships and funding benefit minority

individuals the most because it ultimately determines which schools they can afford to attend.

But again this is all determined by what society considers to be minority or an individual at a

disadvantage at the time. Which could potentially create a unequal gap for those individuals who

are of the majoritys race but are impoverished or struggling with their educational performance.

But it is assumed by the system that even on their worst days majority students are privileged

over the minority, which may not always be the case. These inconsistencies are further

discussed by the american social psychologist Faye Crosby who got her PhD at Boston

University.

Faye Crosby 2004

Nor is affirmative action consistent, according to its critics, in how it

approaches the issue of skin color and disadvantage. At one time Asian Americans were

considered a targeted group; now Asian Americans often suffer because of their

phenomenal academic and professional successes, successes achieved through hard

work and dedication. Many consider it harder for an Asian American student with

excellent grades and high test scores to gain admission to elite universities than it is for a

member of any other group. The skin tone of Asian Americans has not changed but their

affirmative action status has.

 Crosby is right, because affirmative action is based on a subjective thing like race it does

have the potential to be very unfair. Especially in our modern world where racial status and

views changing all the time.

Other individuals who support affirmative action like Kurt Rotthoff a professor at Seton

hall university; who believes that affirmative action creates a down-stream demand effect,

causing schools that train future employers to also accept minority students over equally

qualified majority students. This incentive drives a school's desire to continue to use affirmative

action in the hiring process. Which is something that would never be generated by a merits

system. In a merits system the top students are chosen, not the bottom. But because of

affirmative action there is now an increased demand for the minority, thusly making universities

more diverse because now it is no longer the tops perspective which is taken into account but

the bottoms. Which in turn allows for change to occur but this change has a better chance of

representing a population in its entirety. Rather than representing just what the majority wants.

But it could also be argued that a merits system is also a system that supports a minority so to

speak, since typically the top individuals of a population is a minority. It may also be somewhat

racist to assume that these top individuals can not be of several different minorities. And if this

underprivileged individual is able to somehow make it to the top of a competitive population

based on merit and not affirmative action; shouldnt that improve the overall well being of the

population since this underprivileged individual had more obstacles to conquer, and succeeded

making them smarter and more influential than the rest. Also being a minority and competitively

beating the majority, builds a great deal respect for an individual and gives them a platform to

make the world a better place. With affirmative action they would be given that platform, but

would they still get the respect? Whereas if one tries to make the playing field equal it will
always be at the expense of a certain population. In the case of affirmative action, where the

equality line falls is based on race. So if an individuals race is considered to be an

underprivileged one they have an advantage because the system assumes they have a greater

disadvantage. But an individual who is of a race that assumed by society and the system to be

privileged, could be at a disadvantage if they happen to be underprivileged. Affirmative action

does attempt to research an individual, to try to evaluate just how privileged that individual may

have been. For example if a caucasian individual went to a prestigious school but had a traumatic

childhood that often times interfere with his or her education, that individual would be at an

unjust disadvantage because affirmative action only takes into account that he or she went to a

prestigious school. Also not to mention that an individual can face a great deal more

discriminations and equality issues outside of just their race. But affirmative action solely

pertains to race. Which again can be somewhat problematic and unfair.

It is worth noting that affirmative action has plagued the college admission process for

many years. Affirmative Action has been a problem throughout the years and Bryan Nankervis

examines how it has been a problem in Texas. Bryan Nankervis has earned a Ph.D. in

mathematics at Texas University and is currently researching the inequities connected to the

SAT which results in inequality for females and minorities. Nankervis focuses on the Top Ten

Percent Plan in Texas and how unethical the plan actually is. The Top Ten Percent Plan is a law

enacted in 1998 ensuring that any high school student graduating in the top ten percent of their

high school class gets automatically admitted to all state-funded universities. Dr. Nankervis

informs the readers that this act is a form of race-based affirmative action and impacts the

campus diversity across Texas schools. This plan also impacts the ability for low-income

students to receive a higher-level education. The Top Ten Percent Plan in inequitable and
unethical for low-income students and creating a diverse campus, as the plan clearly favors

students with better circumstances because schools prefer to admit students who come from a

better household. Dr. Nankervis proposes a new and improved plan for the Top Ten Percent Plan

to help those who cannot receive a higher-level education, that would also take into account the

student needs and merit. He proposes an economic-based top ten percent plan that would

increase diversity in terms of class and race, as well as encourage more rigorous course-taking

by college-bound students. (Nankervis, 7). This plan proposed by Dr. Nankervis would help

diversify the students at Texas universities and provide students with a better education at

college.

The SAT scores for incoming students can affect how the students get admitted into

college. The SAT is used for the administration process to help the students see how successful

they will be in their first year at college. Researchers have shown that the SAT correlates with

family incomes, as students with low family incomes with do worse on the standardized test and

students with higher family incomes do better on the standardized test. A study from the US

Census has shown that in Texas, whites and Asian Americans together make up the majority of

families for each monetary grouping above $50K per year, whereas blacks and Hispanics

comprise the majority for all groupings below $50K per year. (US Census, 2010). This source

helps explain how there is a universal cutoff score in the admission process for low-

socioeconomic-status students, which mostly includes blacks and Hispanics. Dr. Nankervis

provides a plan to help the underrepresentation of low-socioeconomic-status students and

minority students. He provides a new stratified economic top ten percent plan for college

admissions that will also be based on students SAT scores and their family income. However,

this plan is intended to help those with less family income since the population of college-
bound students in Texas is large means and standard deviations provided by the College Board

can be used to determine a score that represents the 90th percentile for each income level.

(Nankervis, 9). Nankervis examines that implementing a stratified economic admission plan

would be a benefit for universities, as students already take the SAT and the FAFSA money,

which serves as an establishment for family income. Dr. Nankervis provides some advice for

high school students to take tougher high school classes to help them prepare for the SAT and

future college work.

Whether a person sides with affirmative action or merit, the fact still stands that merit is a

much more logical way of deducing who will or will not go to said university. On the other hand,

affirmative action gives a way for disadvantaged minorities to able to participate in future

schooling. Both have their own flaws and advantages but it begins to show why we have a policy

like affirmative action in the twenty-first century. Times are always changing as we as a society

evolve and equality strives to become the ideal but that isnt predominantly possible. It was not

too long ago that society decided to desegregate colored and whites. Today, society doesnt hold

the same concept of segregation but racial equality is not currently possible. It is hard to say

when will society get there but affirmative action helps those such people to attend universities

and garner a job. But affirmative also makes it more difficult for the more knowledgeable and

proficient students from attending more highly selective and competitive schools.

Peter Henrichs did a research paper relating minority students and affirmative action

admission. His research shows affirmative action bans have no effect on the typical student and

the typical college but decrease minority enrollment and increase white enrollment at more

selective universities. Affirmative action does not have a statistically significant on enrollment in

universities that are less competitive. At more selective universities though, it has a significant
impact. It crowds out the more talented and eligible students from attending said selective

university. Merit is a more reliable and logical way to judge whether a person should be allowed

to go to an university due to their hard work and talents that allowed themselves to strive to get

where they want to be. This point is proven by such questions answered like if affirmative action

is truly better than merit due its promises of equality, if it only generated equality for some and

not all, or is there a better resolution than affirmative action.

Bibliography

"Definition of "affirmative Action" - English Dictionary." Affirmative Action Definition in the

Cambridge English Dictionary. N.p., 2017. Web. 29 Nov. 2017.

Terrell, Melvin, and Logan Patitu. "Benefits of Affirmative Action in Student Affairs."

Academic Search Complete [EBSCO]. N.p., 1998. Web. 29 Nov. 2017.

Rotthoff, Kurt W. "Could Affirmative Action Be Efficient in Higher Education?" Economics

Letters. North-Holland, 09 Oct. 2007. Web. 7 Nov. 2017.

Crosby, Faye J. Affirmative Action Is Dead: Long Live Affirmative Action. Yale University Press,

2004.

Henrichs, P. (2010). The effects of Affirmative Action bans on College Enrollment, Educational

Nankervis, Bryan. Economic-Based Affirmative Action in College Admission. Journal

of College Admission, Issue 225, p6-10, 2014.