In response to “A Half-Baked Opposition,” I’d like to talk about affirmative action, its role in higher education today, and other eerily similar policies. For starters, let’s address meritocracy, an ideal that was brought up in defense of the Cardinal Conservatives’ bake sale and presented as fact. Anyone who has taken Intro. Sociology—even if they jumped ship before drop/add was over—will acknowledge that this supposed pillar of American society is largely fiction. Residential segregation resulting from white flight, Federal Housing Authority policies, and a historically racist bank loan and real estate industry are a few of the reasons we have affirmative action. These result in systematic discrimination against minorities, which affirmative action aims to correct.

Secondly, I’d like to draw attention to other policies admissions offices have at many colleges like the Tech. Just as they recruit minorities in an attempt to decrease racial and ethnic inequality, they also recruit other demographics. For one, athletes. I myself was a beneficiary of athletic recruitment, which helped me through the dauntingly high standards in admissions here at Wes. Let us not forget about all the students here whose mom or pop went to Wesleyan and have been donating to the Annual Fund religiously ever since their child got out of the womb. Ms. Yeung stated “Discrimination occurs when people are deliberately treated differently on a basis other than individual merit.” These legacy students seem to fall directly under this definition, yet there were no free cookies for those whose parents also went to Wesleyan—making the sale seem almost… racial, and less based on principle. Like these examples, Wesleyan recruits based on other things: for example, geographic location. How do you think Sarah Palin got into college? (unrelated but thought this was all too important: all her high school credentials are in sports and beauty pageants)

Lastly, it is almost humorous for the wrong reasons, and maybe even offensive—a bit like Glenn Beck’s “Rally to Restore America” on the anniversary of the March on Washington in 1963—to use Dr. King’s words to bolster an argument that would reduce minority enrollment in American higher education. Dr. King was a democratic socialist; it is hard to imagine him siding with today’s conservatives and, almost entirely against, black people and other minorities. Affirmative action policies work to heal the deep racial and ethnic injustices forged throughout our nations’ history. Keep them baked goods at home.

Waldron is a member of the class of 2013.