‘Diversity’ focus doesn’t help

The shortage of minority students at Western Washington University that you and WWU President, Bruce Shepard, obsess over in your editorial, “Higher ed that looks like us,” is a natural result of the same obsession with race and skin color “diversity” that infects all U.S. campuses.

There are a finite number of minority students who meet minimum requirements and they have been poached by colleges higher on the feeding chain. “Affirmative Action” at elite schools like Harvard give preference to minorities who would have qualified at second tier colleges like UW. UW poaches minorities who would have qualified for and done well at third tier schools like WWU.

Instead, these WWU-qualified minorities struggle to compete with better prepared UW-qualified students and Harvard-qualified white and Asian students who had to settle for UW. This creates an artificial “disparity” that sets minorities up for failure, and too many do fail.

None of these racial preferences help more minorities get into college — every year there are unfilled seats on many campuses with non-competitive admissions. It just puts minority children who might have had a bright future into highly competitive schools where they fail at a disproportionate rate — but it makes effete white liberal administrators feel less guilty — and keeps minorities down on the Democrat Plantation.

John R. Alberti

Everett