Dear Members of the Board for the Center for Equal Opportunity,
On behalf of the Students of the College of Agriculture and Life Science, I would like to formally request that the Center for Equal Opportunity make no subsequent visit to the flourishing and vibrant UW-Madison campus community. Due to the holistic admissions process that our institution employs, students at the university are able to engage in healthy and enriching dialogue that is essential to a well-rounded education.
Furthermore, multicultural competency is an attribute that is becoming increasingly more valuable in the workplace and job market. UW-Madison does not admit students solely based on the attribute of race or ethnicity, as the CEO report claims. Rather, the admissions process tends to favor students who have faced some form of adversity in their pursuit of higher education, such as racism at the High School level. As your studies are based solely on skewed numerical statistics that neglect key factors such as legacy and socio-economic status, I assert that you are grossly underestimating the effort that goes into reviewing all individual applications.
Further, the claims that CEO Chairman Linda Chavez made in her Daily Cardinal editorial are slanderous and invalid. The accusation of ""mob""-like behavior is unwarranted and racially offensive. As an attendee at the rallies, the march, the press conference, and the debate, I can speak to the tremendous amount of organization and respect that was exhibited by our student body. Your attacks and libelous claims against our students, faculty and staff will not be tolerated.
As a white male, I am ashamed that anyone with a white, upper middle-class background as myself would fail to consider our inherent privilage. Over the past two years that I have spent on this campus, I have never received a complaint from a white student pertaining to discrimination against them on the basis of race.
However, I do hear legitimate complaints of racial discrimination from the members of our Chicano/Latino and African American communities on a regular basis. In addition, the state population of Wisconsin is 6.3% African American, according to the 2010 census. And the enrollment for UW-Madison this semester is only 2.8% African American, according to the Bursar's Enrollment Report. If anything our campus could use more cultural diversification and not a ""cleansing"" of our affirmative action practices.
United behind the Wisconsin Idea, each and every student at the University of Wisconsin deserves to be here. Badgers are admitted based on exhibited qualifications in and out of the classroom that lead our Admissions Office to believe they have what it takes to succeed in the environment of high academic expectation. All students are held to the same academic standard in the classroom once they arrive on campus regardless of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, political affiliation or otherwise. Please heed to our request and allow our student body to continue to pursue our academic responsibilities without controversy.
Clayton W. Thomas is the ASM Student Council Representative for the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
Update (Monday 19, 10:09 PM): The Daily Cardinal has updated the online version of this article to fix a spelling mistake, after originally referring to ""upper middle-class"" as ""middle class"" and using ""Hispanic"" instead of ""Chicano/Latino"". The Cardinal regrets the error.
