Decision
evokes anger on campus Decision
evokes anger on campus
In pubs, coffeehouses and libraries campuswide, scholars show disgust
Max Ortiz
The Detroit News
ANN ARBOR -- From the impassioned speeches made around campus Tuesday, you'd think the University of Michigan is the very heartbeat of diversity.
"Diversity is a good thing for everybody," said sophomore Agnes Aleobua, wearing a blue bandana tied around her head. "Everyone on this campus benefits from it."
ĘBut when faced with an opposing view, she rallied for a fight.
"I hate devils," she interrupted when someone suggested playing the devil's advocate.
"Students are outraged by this decision and we will not accept this decision," she shouted, raising her fist into the cold air that carried the occasional fat snowflake. "There is a new massive, militant movement and we will fight this all the way to the Supreme Court. And win!"
Aleobua, a minority on campus, is far from a minority here when it comes to her views on the federal judge's ruling Tuesday to bar the U-M Law School from considering a student's race during the admissions process.
Interviews with 17 students of various races around the campus found that 16 favored affirmative action. One man seemed ready to argue against affirmative action, then thought better of it.
"I had an opinion about this once, but I don't anymore," said the man, who quickly walked away when asked his name.
But for the most part, students studying in the law library's Elizabethan reading room, drinking a cold beer at Ashley's pub, or enjoying a hot tea at the Espresso Royale Caffe uniformly supported affirmative action and denounced the judge who ruled it unfair.
"Today's decision was an ideological decision and a segregationist decision," said Shanta Driver, a law student from Wayne State University who helped organize the effort to support the U-M Law School. "This decision is our generation's Plessy vs. Ferguson," the case which upheld years of "separate but equal" segregation of blacks.
Junior Erika Dowdell said, "There is no excuse for acknowledging racism and saying there is nothing we can do about it."
As for Barbara Grutter, the woman who filed the lawsuit against the law school, there was little concern for her plight.
"I have little sympathy with the plaintiff," said law student Anna Marks of New York. "I think she should suck it up and go to another law school."
Marks will play a justice this Friday in her constitutional law class, in which she will hear both sides of this very case and rule on it. "She's a bit of a whiner," Marks added. "We've all been rejected from someplace."
Others were less harsh, but no more sympathetic.
"Her not getting accepted into this university is not enough to reverse the entire civil rights novement," Aleobua said. "I guess I would tell her that her fate is tied up with the fate of black people. In that way, affirmative action is good for her, too."
You can reach Charles Hurt at (313) 223-4686 or churt@detnews.com.
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