Opinion

Why Women Should Sit In The Balcony

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Related stories:

• Balcony Behavior (September 8, 2004)
• Writer gives foes fodder (March 30, 2007)
• Letter to Editor (March 10, 2005)
• Some feminists go too far blaming men (April 14, 2005)
• Abortion rights activist lacks heart (February 2, 2007)

Also by Mac VerStandig:

• Herald loses friend, advocate (February 28, 2008)
• Why Women Should Sit In The Balcony (April 14, 2003)
• How the Pentagon won the war over Baghdad and the war over public opinion (April 25, 2003)

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If this university is to have a truly ideal learning environment, we must start taking certain things into account when admitting people to our Jewish Studies major. I propose a 150-point system on which we can evaluate candidates for the major.

Someone can receive up to 50 points for grades and other academic achievements. One can earn an additional 50 points if they had a Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah. But women should lose 10 points because they cannot be part of a minyan. And if women are admitted, they should only be able to take classes held in two-tier lecture halls so that they may sit in the balcony.

The next 40 points will be awarded based on one’s ability to speak Hebrew. The final 10 points are for being circumcised, although an 8-point penalty will be assessed for people who cannot prove that a rabbi removed their foreskin.

Needless to say, I am being sarcastic.

Sadly, though, some people are serious about allowing public universities to use a similar system with regard to race. Rob Deters made a case for this in his column April 3. The matter is currently before the Supreme Court, and should the high court allow the University of Michigan to continue to use such criteria, women at this school might want to start to assess the balcony situation.

For those who argue that colleges also grant preferential treatment to athletes, musicians, editors of high school newspapers and people of the like, it is important to note that these are all traits which applicants have worked to acquire. If someone came up slightly short on algebraic effort in high school but showed hard work and notable results as an actor or student council president, there is no reason a university cannot or should not recognize that accomplishment. These are feats achieved by students during their lifetimes, not at their points of conception, and are not tantamount to acts of religious obedience like circumcision.

Let’s further examine the flaws in the University of Michigan’s current system. Imagine two students graduating from the same high school. Student A has a 3.8 GPA, a 32 on his ACTs and is white. Student B has a 3.5 GPA, a 29 on his ACTs and is black. Student A studied longer and harder to get that extra .3 GPA and 3 ACT points. Student B emerged from an African American womb. Nonetheless, Student B may well get the slot and Student A may well get rejected.

Supposing that this system is fair and justifiable, which it is not, questions still remain. How are we to assess ethnicity fairly? Is someone with an Asian father and African American mother to get less merit than someone with two African American parents? And what about white people from South Africa? Do they still get the points? Keep in mind that most public universities don’t meet all of their applicants in advance of acceptance or rejection.

Having established the flaws in the argument for an “ideal” learning environment and having shown some of the issues of implementing a racial criteria in an increasingly colorblind world, let’s examine the argument that affirmative action is a sort of reparation for slavery.

The abhorrent practice of slavery ended over 100 years ago. Not a single person who was a slave is alive today, nor is a single slave owner. If we are to accept that we owe African Americans preferential treatment because of this historical mistake, we might as well hand out Ph.Ds to every living person who has been wrongly incarcerated while standing trial on charges of which they were later acquitted.

The truth, though, is that the factoring of race into educational decisions, which proponents of affirmative action like Mr. Deters favor, is nothing new. The Supreme Court has actually ruled that “Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts, or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences.”

The case was Plessy v. Furguson.

Mac VerStandig (Uwisconsin2006@aol.com) is a freshman majoring in rhetoric.