Discriminations

well, she's right that minority scholarships will decline. this means her lede is more or less accurate ("some scholarship opportunities . . .").

It is amazing how racist and sexist behaviour of individuals is blamed on prop 2. According to the article several groups and individuals have decided to stop or postpone scolarships if they are not allowed to be racist and or sexist in the granting criteria. This is not due to prop 2 - this is soley due to the low moral racism and sexism those gropus and individuals have. Prop 2 does not prohibit scolarships - it only prohibits racism. If gropus like the diverse african-american groups, the ku klux klan or the society of women engineers feel the prohibition of racism and sexism is incompatible with their beliefs, then that is their own fault and should not be blamed on Prop 2.

Chauncey writes:

well, she's right that minority scholarships will decline. this means her lede is more or less accurate ("some scholarship opportunities . . .")

I don’t think so. What the ledes actually says, as I quoted in the post, is that “some scholarship opportunities for the 40,674 students have dried up in light of Proposal 2” (emphasis added here).

It’s simply not true that any scholarship opportunities “for the 40,674” new freshmen have dried up. Nor is it even necessarily true that any opportunities for the minority students have dried up. Although there will no longer be any scholarships available only to minorities, i.e., for which they don’t have to compete against all candidates regardless of race, they would still have an opportunity to win these scholarships unless their sponsors refuse to open applications to all and simply take their money and go home.

What is depressing about the Detroit News article is that it really is not reporting, or at least not reporting in the sense that a reader gets any meaningful idea of what is going on. The "news" is not that some scholarship opportunities have dried up - in fact - as Mr. Rosenberg points out - they are still there - but rather the "news" is, when and if accurately reported, that a certain small number of scholarships which were exclusively reserved for certain minorities and to which they only had to compete against their own are now subject to be awarded to people irrespective of their race. So in other words, competition has been introduced into a few scholarship programs where a racial monopoly formerly existed. And if one were really into the real "news", it would also be reported that Prop 2 may even lead to more scholarships being available, due to the efforts like the University of Michigan alumni (ostensibly a private group, although I would warn them about getting too close to the University) and other private groups to give race based awards. And note, the group who suffers from this make sure the narrative meets our prevailing meme reporting is not, as so many think, those of a conservative or libertarian bent. No, what really suffers is the institution itself, because for only so long can they report non-news that meets their ideology and spin before they find their product is not useful to many, including advertisers, and in particular these days with alternative media choices easily obtainable. Any organization that doesn't continually compete for ideas will suffer in the long fun, exactly the point the diversicrats ought to be digesting as well, because while they pray to the shibboleth of diversity, their tolerance for other views is anything but tolerant. Again, this kind of reporting is simply depressing.

john:

well, not really. here's a really simple example: assume Umich offered only two types of scholarships pre-prop 2: a minority scholarship and a universal scholarship. if, after prop 2, you take away the non-competitive minority-only scholarship (by non-competitive, i mean the minority candidate doesn't have to compete against non-minorities) and replace it with (or "restructure" it as) a more competitive universal scholarship, the increased competition represents the "lost opportunity" to the minority scholarship candidate. this lost opportunity is tantamount to an increase of opportunity for non-minority candidates. the loss of opportunity and increase in competition also mean that fewer minorities will receive the new universal scholarship: i.e., fewer minorities will receive any scholarship at all. hence it's true that “some scholarship opportunities for the 40,674 students [a portion of which is comprised of minorities] have dried up in light of Proposal 2.”

of course, you can make the argument that everything is "fairer" with a universal scholarship, but a loss of opportunity occurs nonetheless.