Repubs busted for offering scholarship to white hetero males

Not sure of this story, as the supposed link to the news item actually goes back to the blog.

[quote]My home state, Rhode Island, seldom makes the news. But it has done so twice in the past five years or so over the same thing: a scholarship for white males. The first time this happened it was by the College Republicans at Roger Williams University (some five minutes from my house), this time it’s the same group at the University of Rhode Island (this time they tacked on “heterosexual” to white male). It was even for the same amount, $100, not even enough to buy my Electromagnetics book.

Pretty much the same thing happened this time as last time, except this got slightly less national press and the university didn’t handle it as well. Oh, and no one won it this time. Here’s the backlash:

The student senate was not amused, and in February the Student Organizations Advisory and Review Committee demanded that the College Republicans: A) not award the $100 scholarship, B) apologize in writing for having violated the anti-discrimination section of the senate’s bylaws, and C) seek permission from the senate before mounting any programs in the next 12 months. The group cheerfully agreed to A – why not? – and declined to comply with B and C.

In response the Advisory and Review Committee exercised the nuclear option and voted to derecognize the group, in spite of the fact that Robert Carothers, the university’s president, had declared on April 6 that it was unconstitutional to require the College Republicans to “make public statements which are not their own.” (The relevant First Amendment category is “compelled speech.”)[/quote]

Story is here: Rhode Island Controversy

If it’s legit, I’m with the blog-writer and the Republicans on this one. How can anyone who calls him or herself “liberal” take such an anti-liberty stance? I know what the conservatives will say, “Liberals are actually close-minded and anti-liberty when it comes to opinions contrary to their own.” Well, unfortunately, that sometimes appears to be the case, but THIS liberal thinks that OTHER liberals ought to be vocal in criticizing this kind of thing when it happens. Gives us a bad name.

The funniest part of this is that the Rhode Island Republican Party declared that the “College republicans” may not capitalize the R in their name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Williams_University

In the news, the only mention of College Republicans at Roger Williams University is: “Two hosts at WQRI, Roger Williams University’s student-run radio station, find themselves off the air after they disobeyed their program director by uttering ‘nappy-headed hos’ multiple times during a show this week.”

The two College Republican radio show hosts were permitted to say “nappy-headed hos” in reference to the recent Imus news story, yet believed that this derogatory term should fill the airwaves. Well, they were taken off the air, and I believe rightly so.

By the way, there are a number of scholarships available exclusively for caucasians. But is it the place of the Republicans to start handing these out, as though it’s some kind of a political statement? I really don’t know what the College Republicans were making a fuss about three years ago.

And apparently Ethan Wingfield, the chair of the College Republicans until five days ago also thinks it’s too much “free speech”. In his resignation letter, Wingfield refers to the recent controversies surrounding the URI and Roger Williams College Republicans and urges restraint in exercising liberty.

“As I leave this post, College Republicans around this state have created multiple controversies by exercising our liberty of free speech,” Wingfield said. He also urged College Republicans to “use wisdom and be virtuous” when exercising liberty.

The Horror!!! There are lots of perfectly good opressed, abused, downtrodden, minorities who were made fun of as a child who could have got that $100. Such a display of hatred is appalling! :wink:

Yeah, that was exactly the point. Piss off the Liberals, who in kneejerk college kid fashion overreact, and then you’ve got some nice proof of “reverse discrimination” to wail about.

The blog-writer has this to say:

[quote]Honestly, tolerance isn’t accepting people with different skin color or sexual orientation; it’s accepting people with different ideas. Every decent human being understands that all people are the same when skin or sex is concerned. It doesn’t take any kind of feat to accept them; it’s much more difficult to accept people with whom you vehemently disagree. (Yes, I’m aware that there is still discrimination against some people in the world. I mean acceptance at an individual level, not at a societal level. We’re not even close to acceptance at the societal level for many peoples.)

By pulling these stunts the College Republicans showcase one of the many hypocrisies of our culture. If the liberals who disagree with their positions want to deal with them in a liberal way, then debate their ideas, don’t shut them down. I find that far too often that’s the reaction to things that liberals don’t like to hear (especially on college campuses), and it’s more disgusting than some Republican positions.[/quote]

My own memories of college confirm what he’s saying. I ran into this kind of hypocrisy plenty of times back then, and I always made a point of standing up to it.

Can you give an example?

Can you give an example?[/quote]

You can find scholarships by searching for them on the internet. The particular search I used on yahoo! was “caucasian scholarship university -rhode -BU -boston -republicans” and I needed to read the first three or four results to find this scholarship.

[quote=“Tennessee State Scholarship for Caucasians”]SCHOLARSHIP ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

The Minority Scholarship requires that students meet the following requirements:

* Caucasian
* U.S. citizen
* Graduating from a Tennessee high school
* Minimum 2.5 cumulative GPA
* Minimum ACT score of 19* or equivalent SAT score of 900*
* Entering college for the first time
* Fully admitted to Tennessee State University[/quote]

Scholarships for caucasians are not as common as those for other races, for whatever reason. It’s not the only scholarship for caucasians in the US.

How is it remotely legal to have scholarships which depict race in the US?

As far as I am aware these are completely illegal in Europe and Australia. Its like you guys are legalizing discrimination, whether positive or negative…and could someone enlighten me into defining Caucasian?

Everyone who knows me, knows I am a white guy, yet for my cousins who are half-white, its way harder to pick. What defines Caucasion?

nevermind

[quote=“Tyc00n”]and could someone enlighten me into defining Caucasian?

[/quote]

Those whose names end in “vili” (Georgians) or homeless Chechens, separatists from Abkhazia, farmers from North & South Ossetia and amputee asylum seekers from Dagestan.

:unamused:

BroonArmenian

Well, with private money you can pretty much do what you want. Every few years someone gets upset about the African American Sholarship Fund and does something along the lines of the Rhode Island group. Now, that one in Tennessee kinda throws me off, because it appears to be linked with state. If so maybe they are doing it proportionally so it gets by.

[quote=“BroonAle”][quote=“Tyc00n”]and could someone enlighten me into defining Caucasian?

[/quote]

Those whose names end in “vili” (Georgians) or homeless Chechens, separatists from Abkhazia, farmers from North & South Ossetia and amputee asylum seekers from Dagestan.

:unamused:

BroonArmenian[/quote]

Ah, someone born in the Caucasus. Very clever. :unamused:

Do they have scholarships for feckless alcoholics?

There is a scholarship for exotic dancers and strippers.
Note: All genders may apply!

Well, with private money you can pretty much do what you want. Every few years someone gets upset about the African American Sholarship Fund and does something along the lines of the Rhode Island group. Now, that one in Tennessee kinda throws me off, because it appears to be linked with state. If so maybe they are doing it proportionally so it gets by.[/quote]

TSU is a predominantly black university and is trying to attract white students to increase its diversity.

Well, its funny that the US is all for expansion of the EU to include Turkey, but if integration works so well over there, why is it so common to have race based funding / scholarships?

The same reason why they are the most vocal (and well, active) in making sure second- and third-world nations do not obtain nuclear weapons while hold tightly onto their own stockpile and are still to this date the only nation to use nuclear weapons in an act of aggression.

Hypocrisy is the American way.

Because 1) we have scholarships for just about anything these days and 2) University admissions/funding are historically an area with a lot of racial tension. Also, notice that most state funded race based scholarships are a means of promoting, rather than discouraging integration. Nobody says integration is an instantaneous thing.

Oh come on. I’m about as liberal as anyone on this forum, but this is a bit much. Are you seriously suggesting the world would be a better place if we let those nations get their weapons? Or that the US should give theirs up, seeing how willing France, China, Russia and the rest are to do that?

And if you’re so upset about Japan being A-bombed, have you ever asked yourself what they’d have done, had they managed to produce an atomic weapon first? Think they’d have had any moral compunction at all? I bet China, among other nations, is really glad nobody had the chance to find out!

Come to think of it, Australia does offer a certain number of places reserved for native Aborigines, and given the shameful circumstances in which they live, I’m not against it at all. (Of course I’m sure everyone is aware of the disasterous ‘stolen generation’ which was a more radical attempt at integration).

I can understand that in the US, there are plenty of impoverished whites, but it still shocked me a little to see a scholarship based on colour.

But doesn’t just make far more sense integration-wise to have scholarships for poor / disadvantaged people? In this way there is no discrimination, reverse or otherwise, and if there are more poor people of a certain ethnic group, then more of them will qualify for the scholarships being offered. By offering a ‘free pass’ to certain ethnic groups isn’t this just going to be seen as a handout by academic and later by the business world?

If I as a business person was looking to hire someone, and I lived in a society where a large number of scholarships / free places were offered to a certain ethnic group, I’d have to wonder whether they were sitting opposite me because of a free ride. Its just an example of how by trying to help a certain people, you in fact hinder the efforts of people from that same ethnic group, who, against the odds, and without handouts, got there by sheer determination and tenacity.

Well, as Spook pointed out, the particular scholarship at issue was for a white person to attend a historically black school, that had trouble recruiting whites. If race is going to be a factor in scholarship awards, that’s actually one I wouldn’t have much of a problem with.

I think the bigger issue is whether race based scholarship/admissions policies have any place in public education anymore. Such policies are rooted in the black/white dynamic that has dominated race/ethnicity politics for a long time. In the environment of the 50’s and 60’s, it may have been reasonable to treat all minorities as black equivalents, and give them benefits because anyone who wasn’t white was inherently disadvantaged (or so the reasoning goes). With the massive influxes of people from Latin America and Asia over the past 30 years or so, the black/white structure is out of date. Now you see affirmative action policies that actually disfavor Asian Americans becuase of their success, even though they don’t enjoy any of the supposed “privileged” status that comes with being white. For example, the children of a poor Vietnamese fisherman who managed to fight his way to America and work his way up from the bottom could actually be passed over for a much more privileged person from a more favored minority.