Scholarship challenges affirmative action

The Boston University College Republicans (BUCR) have recently made headlines for their controversial "Caucasian Achievement and Recognition" scholarship, which they say is designed to raise awareness about racial preferences.

The scholarship is for $250, and requires applicants to be at least one-fourth Caucasian. The application also requires two essays, one describing ancestry and the other describing "what it means to be a Caucasian-American today."

"We know it's ridiculous, but we think it's ridiculous in the same way to give out a Hispanic scholarship or a scholarship based on race in any way, shape or form," BUCR member Joe Mroszczyk told Boston's CBS 4 TV station.

Affirmative action [HTML_REMOVED] that is, providing advantages in matters such as employment and college admissions based on ethnicity and gender [HTML_REMOVED] has been a hotly contested issue since its introduction in 1961 with President Kennedy's creation of the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.

UW College Republicans President Dan Murdock said he thinks the BUCR scholarship is a creative and clever way to take a stand against affirmative action.

"I think it's an interesting way to mock the multicultural ideology that seemingly trumps everything on university campuses," Murdock said. "It gets it across in a funny way. They're offering a white scholarship as a way to mock scholarships based on race. It gets people questioning, 'Do we really want to award people scholarships based purely on the color of their skin?'"

UW Young Democrats Vice President of Development Nicholas Fusso said he feels that affirmative action is a policy that is misunderstood [HTML_REMOVED] and not necessarily unfair.

"Affirmative action doesn't give preferential treatment to people just because they are minorities," Fusso said. "Rather, it allows for a more diverse campus, bringing in people that might not have normally applied. The policy has been adapted from the previous quota system, to a modified version in which we strive for a broad range of people with lots of different experiences."

Fusso emphasized that academic excellence should remain a core value, and said that diversity should never supercede academic excellence. Rather, he said, there should be a focus on diversity of background and experience.

"The spirit of affirmative action is still very much in place, in that it makes sure that there are lots of people with different experiences to offer," Fusso said.

While Murdock agreed, he emphasized the importance of having a student body comprised of diverse viewpoints and values [HTML_REMOVED] not just racial backgrounds.

"This whole multicultural ideology seems to think that people with different skin hues is more important than those who think differently in interesting ways," Murdock said. "Ultimately, diversity of thought is far more important than diversity of skin color."

Reporter Katie Stapleton-Paff: news@thedaily.washington.edu