“For too long, African-Americans on our campus have faced obstacles to feeling fully included in the life of our university,” said Nicholas Dirks, chancellor of the University of California system's flagship school, adding that the initiative is “predicated on our collective determination to engage and improve the campus climate for African-Americans across every sector of our community.”
A few days ago, I posted news about UC Berkeley's cave in to all kinds of demands by something called the African-American Initiative. that would include recruiting black only psychologists to "meet the needs" of the school's black students. It all includes a $20 million fund to "improve the campus climate" for black students. No, they are not going to pump in artificial sunlight. Climate in university speak means a friendly-or unfriendly atmosphere.
The question is whether all these set asides for one particular group violates the law.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/10/06/critics-question-legality-cal-berkeley-new-20m-race-based-scholarship-program/?intcmp=hpbt2
UC Berkeley has certainly not tried to keep black students out of their school. Like other colleges, they want to attract more minority students-with the possible exception of Asian-Americans since many in academia complain that they are over-represented because of their hard work, good grades, and parental involvement in attaining academic excellence.
But I digress.
The problem is that Berkeley has high standards for admittance, and there is a ton of competition from other school for black students who come out of high school with top grades. So the geniuses at Berkeley come up with stuff like thi rather than follow the law and not discriminate in any fashion.
As for the dopey statement by Chancellor Dirks above, I wonder if he could be specific and describe how the campus has failed to be welcoming to black students.
Psychology is rather subjective at best. In that specific, I'm not at all sure its a bad thing to have black psychologists available. Of course, if a black student prefers to see a psychologist who is "white," there should be nothing preventing him from doing so.
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