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The Jan. 9 statement that announced the revocation of

“legacy” considerations in the admissions process, said, “not one student of the more than 10,000

who were admitted was admitted solely on the basis of legacy.”

If legacy has long been

an admissions criterion and nobody has ever been admitted “solely” on its basis, then what about

race? Wouldn’t it also be true that during the long years of considering race as an admissions

factor, nobody was every admitted “solely” on the basis of race?

The question is important,

because it indicates that if the admissions policies have been consistently and fairly applied,

students who applied for admissions during the period of affirmative action were always assessed as

individuals, never “solely” on the basis of race.

If, as the Gates statement stresses,

legacy criteria only resulted in the admission of students who were qualified in an overall sense, then

isn’t the same thing true of affirmative action?

But if the same thing is true of

affirmative action that was true of legacy admissions, why was it necessary to abolish affirmative

action in order to assure that applicants would be assessed individually?

[The above was

published as Letter to the Editor in the Bryan Daily Eagle, Jan. 13; and with some helpful edits in the

Austin American-Statesman, Jan. 15, 2004]

TEXAS EDUCATION

STILL NEEDS TO BE

DESEGREGATED

Dear Editor,

With all the helpful coverage and activism

that has already emerged in response to the Texas A&M decision to rescind affirmative action in

admissions, there is still one crucial fact which has not been reported: Texas higher education is

still under federal supervision for desegregation.

Perhaps everyone is a little

embarrassed by this fact, so people are a little reluctant to mention it publicly, but Texas has agreed

to four successive “Texas Plans” with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

The first Texas plan officially began in 1983. The fourth Texas plan was offered by Gov. George W. Bush

in the summer of 2000, and it will continue for several more years.

In fact, Texas A&M

adopted affirmative action on Dec. 5, 1980, in order to show that the university could be counted on to

act as a trustworthy partner in “good faith” during the upcoming years of desegregation. Affirmative

action, therefore, is the university’s way of saying, you can depend on us to take responsibility for

our own desegregation.

The crucial context of desegregation changes everything about the

importance of the Texas A&M decision, so it should be reported and discussed, not evaded.

[Austin Chronicle, Jan. 15, 2004]

Gates said he was prepared for a flood of e-mails on the subject and that

he hopes most Aggies see this as the “next logical step” in a new approach to picking the A&M student

body.

“My guess is that a lot of former students don’t really appreciate how little

impact legacy has had on the process in the real world,” he said. “If the reality is that legacy helped

300 get in, the perception of some Aggies is probably that it’s 3,000.”

He added that

A&M officials will continue to encourage students from Aggie families to apply for

admission.

Gates said he discussed the legacy decision with the A&M System Board of

Regents and members were supportive. Several regents — including Chairman Lowry Mays and Vice Chairman

Erle Nye, both A&M graduates — could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon. [John LeBas

theeagle.com January 10, 2004]

See Official Gates statement of Jan. 9, 2004 below.

January 9, 2004

STATEMENT ON LEGACY

http://www.tamu.edu/president/speeche

s/040109legacy.html

Texas A&M University President Robert Gates

On

December 3, 2003, when I announced the comprehensive plan to recruit and enroll more minorities at

Texas A&M University, I stated that all students would be admitted based on individual merit and

potential contribution to the University community. Further, I stated at that time and in subsequent

meetings with legislators and internal and external groups that all admissions factors—including

legacy—were under review to ensure that we have a fair and equitable process. This was due in part to

our understanding that there was an inconsistency in the continued use of legacy in a merit-based

process.

We believe, as virtually every university in the country does, that students

whose family members have attended its university add value to what makes those institutions unique.

This is especially true at Texas A&M. At the same time, the solidity of the Aggie family and the

strength of the Aggie culture are not the result of four out of 100 points on an admissions evaluation.

For the three-fourths of our freshmen who were enrolled in the fall of 2003 under the top ten percent

law and automatic academic admission, legacy was irrelevant. Indeed, not one student of the more than

10,000 who were admitted was admitted solely on the basis of legacy. In fact, legacy has been a formal

part of A&M’s admissions process only since 1989 and has played far less of a role in admissions than

either Aggies or others probably believe.

In an admissions process based on individual

merit and potential contribution to the university community, prior affiliation with Texas A&M should

not be a criterion. We intend to continue to urge students from Aggie families to apply to A&M and, if

accepted, to enroll here. But, after consultation with each of the Texas A&M University System Regents,

I have decided that, effective immediately, Texas A&M will no longer award points for legacy in the

admissions review process.

I had intended that legacy be addressed in an ongoing review

of our admissions procedures. However, public perceptions of the fairness and equity of our process

clearly are important and require prompt action to deal with an obvious inconsistency in an admissions

strategy based on individual merit.

Indeed, in retrospect, this decision regarding

legacy should have been part of my December 3rd announcement and because it was not, Texas A&M has

suffered unfortunate negative publicity. I take full responsibility for that.

Today’s

announcement brings greater consistency and equity to our admissions decision making process. We will

continue our review.

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

Over Christmas break I reread The Great Gatsby, my favorite novel. It describes our human fate, relentless and connecting up to human violence (called “carelessness” in the book); like an ancient Greek tragedy, the novel always leaves me drenched and almost cleansed at the end. Written in 1922, it is “the great American novel,” loaded with insights and criticism, even pointing out America’s beginning fixation on automobiles, “driving toward death in the cooling twilight.”

And, if that was not moody enough, I got a new book for Christmas, Violence, by a philosopher from Slovenia, Slavoj Zizek (pronounced “JeeJek,” I’m told). His book opens this way:

“There is an old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, as he leaves the factory, the wheelbarrow he rolls in front of him is carefully inspected. The guards can find nothing. It is always empty.” The guards never figure it out, but…”The worker is stealing wheelbarrows!”

It made me think: We are always looking for little instances of violence, signs of violence, worrying that violence might happen on this street and being shocked when we see it in school or on a border between nations. We worry about certain T.V. shows, but we never really look at the overall structure. Maybe the whole wheelbarrow is violent; our whole social administration, our religions are violent; and, of course, Hollywood — but not just Hollywood — California is violent. We are.

Our entertainments, our fascinations, our corporate farms, our globalized capitalist economy itself–all are part of a violent network. Violence as injustice and cruelty is everywhere: Israel, Yes. Hamas, Yes. But also America, whose “geopolitical” plans for the Middle East have caused the current Gaza conflict, ultimately pushing confrontation and blocking U.N. peace efforts, and other efforts. (Remember America’s on-going geopolitical invasion and occupation of Iraq has taken over half a million lives, and created 3 million refugees, some displaced inside Iraq and some now living outside it.)

“Oh, I am so shocked that Hamas fired random rockets onto territory that Israel now owns,” say some conservatives. “Oh, I am so shocked at Israel’s disproportionate response, killing 100 Palestinians for every one Israeli killed,” say some liberals. But I think Zizek might say, “Look at the disparities between rich and poor and the millions of people killed through 200 years of British and U.S. imperialism in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. For once, let’s quit acting shocked, notice the wheelbarrow, and examine root causes.”

Although I may review Violence for this column soon — it deserves a good review — let me report something directly hopeful.

* * *

I interviewed Marina Saenz-Luna, a woman in her early twenties, I guess, whom I worked with two summers ago on issues involving detention centers. She has since moved up north to be an organizer with Just Harvest USA, but was visiting here in the Rio Grande Valley last week.

Braune: I know your group has celebrated a victory lately for the tomato pickers in Florida.

Saenz-Luna: Yes. Just Harvest USA is proudly linked to the Campaign for Fair Food created after the CIW victory against Taco Bell a few years ago. [CIW is a Florida farmworker union: Coalition of Immokalee Workers.] The most recent victory was an agreement with Subway. Subway met the workers’ demands: A one penny more per pound wage increase, the creation of a code of conduct that would extend to all of the workers that pick fruits and vegetables in the U.S. for Subway restaurants, and a zero tolerance policy on slavery.

Braune: I know that the Subway settlement is a great victory: forcing Taco Bell, then McDonalds and Burger King and now Subway to start recognizing the tomato pickers’ dignity. But what is the general mission of Just Harvest USA?

Saenz-Luna: We want to advance farmworker rights, by drawing attention and commitment to human and labor rights, especially through the sustainable food movement. We generate national awareness of farmworkers’ struggles for justice among people who care about local, healthy, non-corporate food and agriculture; and we mobilize this sector in effective campaigns for living wages and safe and dignified working conditions for farmworkers.

Braune: I know you identify closely with the working class and the poor. And you see them as the agent of change, right?

Saenz-Luna: Yes. I once worked a job where I too was exploited and at a loss. It’s been the CIW that has inspired me to speak up for myself: members tell their own stories and lead others in the Campaign for Fair Food. I moved down to Immokalee, Florida at the beginning of last year as an intern to learn how some of the lowest-paid and least respected workers in the U.S. were getting not only higher wages for the tomatoes they picked for about 90% of the country in the winter-time but more importantly gaining dignity and respect.

Braune: And now you work in Baltimore with the national network.

Saenz-Luna: Yes, I am now on the steering committee representing Baltimore, Maryland and the surrounding area (where I now live) for the Student/Farmworker Alliance. (Two people in the Valley in our network are Victoria Siempre and John-Michael Torres. The Valley has a special relationship with Immokalee: I met many families when I was in Immokalee, Florida who had started picking oranges and grapefruits in the Valley a few decades ago.)

The Campaign for Fair Food is calling on the agribusiness industry as a whole to take responsibility for the miserable conditions that those who labor to harvest our fruit and vegetables endure. Our campaign has included tactics of brand-busting fast food logos, making alternative, independent media to tell farmworker’s stories, and ultimately influencing popular culture across culturas and ages by engaging in creative non-violent actions, marches and discussions big and small.

On Saturday, "a well-publicized protest by about a dozen Minutemen,
with three times that many gathered to oppose them" shut down a Denton
day labor site, reports Bill Teeter of the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

Organizer Cindy Lou of the LoneStar Minutemen applauded the
results. And the newspaper described her organization as: "U.S.
residents who voluntarily keep watch on the Mexican border to spot
illegal immigrants and report them to authorities."

Outnumbering the Minutemen 3-to-1 were a coalition of protesters from
"the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Denton County
Democratic Party, North Texas for Justice and Peace, Anti-Racist Action
and Peace Action Denton."

"They are here to oppose the immigration; we are here to support"
the workers, said Coty Rodriguez, the District 3 LULAC director for
North Texas. Legislative and foreign-policy initiatives can address
immigration problems, she said.

Arvin Hill of Peace Action Denton calls the Minutemen’s assertions "over the top."

"They characterize immigration as an invasion coordinated by the
Mexican government and elements of our own government," Hill said.

Hill also said the Minutemen have been found to have ties to white supremacists.

Minuteman Marvin Brooke vehemently challenged that.

"When you can’t come up with a valid, legal argument, then you shout ‘racist,’" said Brooke, of Allen.

Quotes from "Group protests at day-labor site" Jan. 8, 2005.