To the Daily:
With all of the debate about affirmative action and University admissions in general, I'm surprised that nobody has taken on the true culprit. The University's policy of rolling admissions constitutes a hurdle that it will have to overcome if it wants to draw from the most-qualified applicant pool possible. The University's rolling admissions policy causes many well-qualified students to sit in limbo while the University constructs a waitlist of all of the students who have met or exceeded the criteria for admission but cannot be admitted because other, potentially less-qualified students have already been admitted.
This system causes some students to be denied admission not on the basis of their merit or ethnic group, but simply on the basis of when they decided to bring their application to the post office.
Over the past few years, the University has consistently expanded freshman class sizes beyond the number that have been planned. This has caused housing problems, a restricted selection of classes (particularly seminars) for first-year students who register toward the end of class sign-ups, and countless hours of indecision and uncertainty in the lives of waitlisted applicants. Also, the rolling admissions policy requires the admissions office to speculate on the quality of an incoming class long before even a fraction of the class to be has submitted an application. Why not just wait until all applications have been received and then evaluate the applicant pool based on a consistent and fair standard?
Of course, the rolling admissions policy can be seen as a way for the University to attract qualified students who wish to avoid waiting until mid-April for admissions results. There is nothing wrong with this in theory, but most highly competitive schools require that a prospective student agree to enroll if accepted via early decision. This system balances the effect of early admissions by assuming that students who are not willing to commit to enroll after early decision are not worth space in the first-year class. Such a system decreases the number of early decision applicants, thereby lowering the amount of speculation required by admissions officers and increasing the accuracy of their inferences.
The University's policy on rolling admissions does not benefit from any checks or balances. It relies completely upon the intuitions of admissions officers. These intuitions have proven to be untrustworthy.
It is time that the University realize that rolling admissions are an unwanted legacy of the University's less-competitive past. In the current environment of increasingly qualified applicant pools, admissions policies ought to reflect the University's highest commitment to its students, both current and prospective.
Matthew Murphy
LSA junior
To the Daily:
I would like to congratulate the Michigan hockey team for their second national championship in three years. My favorite memory, as I watched the final moments of the April 4 game, was sharing in the ecstacy of the Michigan team as I jumped around my apartment. But half of the camera shots were focused on the weeping Boston College team.
I realized then, that this amazing contrast between agony and ecstacy wasn't necessary. There was a way every one could be happy. There are other sports where there doesn't have to be one national champion. As you may recall, the University of Nebraska's football team was spared this agony, when a select fraternity of college coaches decided to hand them one-fourth of the national championship hardware.
Simply put, the game could have been called after regulation. Besides, Brian "sudden death" Engblom was so shocked that Boston College didn't win after three periods, he couldn't figure out that Michigan's 5-0-1 overtime record was better than Boston College's 1-2-5 record.
I must admit, I'm more of a football fan than a hockey fan, and the split national championship seems like an answer to everybody's prayers.
Remember kindergarten? Everybody should go home thinking they are winners. Well I guess that's why hockey is the No. 3 revenue enhancer of all college sports.
Go Blue ... and I love college hockey.
Sridhar Kaza
Engineering senior
To the Daily:
One of the most outstanding issues on campus is affirmative action and the related lawsuits. Having looked at the admissions chart, the only applicants affected are those on the borderline of admittance. When a decision is between two students with marginal GPAs, the University gives slight preference to the minority. Seeing as white people are the vast majority in this country, I believe that the University can make this small sacrifice in order to educate more minorities. It can only benefit the entire University and the country to have more minority college graduates.
Nathan Fredericks
LSA first-year student
To the Daily:
I would like to make a few comments regarding Daily Sports Writer Josh Kleinbaum's less-than-impressive article regarding the Michigan women's crew team ("Michigan rowing team to host cavaliers," 3/26/98). Though the article itself was clearly an indication of Kleinbaum's personal ignorance regarding the oldest sport in intercollegiate athletics, the true purpose of this letter is the first two lines of the article: "Believe it or not, Michigan has a rowing team. And it's pretty good, too." I find it rather amusing that this line appeared in the Daily that recently claimed to be the source of "All your Michigan crew coverage." I find myself wondering if the exclusion of even the slightest mention of the men's team is a personal attack or merely the product of the highest form of intellectual incompetence.
Now I know that the Daily has a policy regarding the coverage of club teams, a convenient veil repeatedly used to cover up the Daily's journalistic shortcomings, but my first question has to be, why? Is the Daily so infantile that its only definition for a student athlete derives from whom the University chooses to bestow Nike's self-promoting financial contributions? The fact that no club teams are covered in the Daily with even the slightest bit of respect is a gross misuse of the journalistic responsibilities it is ill-suited to fulfill. There are many student athletes at this University who do not receive free Nike sweats, and work just as hard as any to carry on the stellar tradition of Michigan athletics.
The existence of club sports on this campus is a very significant community, and one that is completely ignored in the Daily. If the its job is to cover the various facets of life on campus, then I suggest that it actually fulfill that role, or at the very least admit to its own incompetence.
The Daily claims not to have the manpower to cover every club sport. My response is this: Why did it waste the time, space and effort on a full-page article covering the bowling habits of the hockey team? If the absurdity of this fact is still lost on the Daily, then I apologize for taking a harsh tone with a paper clearly unable to perceive neither a sense of responsibility nor of competence regarding the craft it employs. If the Daily wishes to continue its impressive tradition of negligence, then I feel that the University community will continue to be tortured by the spectacular combination of incompetence, lack of creativity and mindless drivel that occurs five days a week in the Daily.
Michigan does not have "a" rowing team. They have two.
John Gekas
LSA sophomore
04-10-98
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