April 7, 2008

Measure to Ban Affirmative Action in Oklahoma Fails to Make It Onto the Ballot

Opponents of affirmative action who had been working to put a measure on Oklahoma’s ballot this fall have filed a motion to withdraw their proposal from consideration, according to the Tulsa World.

The motion to withdraw the proposal — which would have asked the state’s voters to ban the use of racial, ethnic, and gender preferences by public colleges and other state and local agencies — said the ballot measure’s supporters did not believe that they had gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, the newspaper said.

To get on the ballot, the petitioners would have needed 138,970 valid signatures. The Oklahoma secretary of state’s office counted 141,184 signatures on the petition but found a large number of duplicates.

The Oklahoma proposal was part of a national campaign by the prominent affirmative-action critic Ward Connerly, of the American Civil Rights Institute, to follow on his success in Michigan. Voters there overwhelmingly approved a similar ballot measure in 2006.

In addition to Oklahoma, Mr. Connerly and his supporters have eyed Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, and Nebraska as states where they are working to qualify ballot measures to end racial preferences. —Sara Hebel

Comments

1. This is great news! I hope this also happens in my home state of MO and in all others targeted.

   — JD    Apr 7, 04:39 PM    #

2. There is so much discrimination now in terms of college admissions against women of all ethnic groups. This could change the face of college campuses.

   — Meredith    Apr 7, 06:28 PM    #

3. Meredith, what’s your evidence for this? In my experience, women are represented on college campuses today in greater proportions than their percentage of the population. It would seem that the opposite of what you say is true.

   — paulo    Apr 7, 07:30 PM    #

4. … and, while being over 50% of the college students, they are about 20% of the engineering undergrads and 22% of the physics undergrads, with similar disparities in enrollment in other fields. Departments concerned for the good of their profession about this sort of gender disparity, such as many engineering, physics, and, yeah, nursing departments, would like to use affirmative action to remedy the imbalance, but one side effect of Ward Connerly’s crusade is that such disparities are in danger of getting locked into place.

   — Bob M.    Apr 8, 06:23 AM    #

5. By all means, let keep the social engineering going, because it’s had such a good effect so far. The only discrimination going on in higher ed today is against the white middle aged male. There are so many race/gender/minority preferences in place that it is amazing that anyone not in some sort of “mal-treated” group gets into college.

   As for women being a minority in certain fields, it means that they are the vast majority in others. I don’t hear much angst over that. Equal representation across all fields at all times is not achievable nor is it going to be beneficial. Just because someone meets some sort of demographic does not make them a strong contributor to an area. I’d rather have 10 really strong individuals who are similar (regardless of race/gender) than have 1 black, 1 hispanic, 1 asian, etc, etc who don’t have anything to contribute other than diversity.

   — D    Apr 8, 09:54 AM    #

6. Earn your own way in life instead of depending on the government to bail your undereducated asses out

   — Mark Fullerton    Apr 8, 12:52 PM    #

7. It is always interesting to listen to people like Mark (#6) make statements like “earn your own way in life…..” Of course Mark, every descent and reasonable person would like to do that except the same government you are accussing of bailing out “uneducated….” etc. is the same government, years back, that excluded the generations of these groups except for the generations of white males. In the process the government at the time provided white males with all sorts of welfare, quotas, and handouts which white males used to establish the economic roots that their heirs are now enjoying and claiming to have been acquired fair and square. Pul-e-e-z-e… Now, you find it inappropriate for the same government to “bail out” descendants of these previously and systematicaly excluded groups that suffered while white males at the time benefited from the systematic exclusion.

   — /Really Concerned    Apr 8, 03:45 PM    #

8. There have been several newspaper articles in the past few years about how academic standards have been lowered for men at many colleges to maintain a certain percentage of men on campus. U.S. News & World Report conducted a review of 1,400 colleges and said that there was evidence of gender bias in admissions. Kenyon, William and Mary and University of Richmond have been mentioned in articles on this. A simple Google search will yield ample information on the admissions bias.

   — Meredith    Apr 8, 11:18 PM    #

9. It always amazes me how the Marks (#6) of the world can so easily forget and ignore the fact that for years, minorities and women have been systematically discriminated against in every way possible. The fact that laws were written to keep “undesirables” out of what was considered to rightfully belong to only whites. That doesn’t magically go away overnight. Let’s get real here. There is still widespread institutional discrimination on all levels. Just because there are no longer memos being passed around companies saying dont hire (blacks, hispanics, women, etc) does not mean that it isn’t thought. And as far as affirmative action goes, admissions isn’t the issue. So what if someone gets into a school because of their color. What matters is that they graduate from institutions of higher learning on their own merits.

   Affirmative action may or may not have gotten me into an Ivy League institution, so what. It didn’t earn me my bachelors or my dual masters degrees. So I guess my undereducated ass proved you wrong.

   — Marjorie Dorime    Apr 13, 09:47 AM    #

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