“Affirmative action takes the spot away from a well-qualified white man and gives his spot away to an unqualified African American.” When I saw this quote attributed to me in the DI on Oct. 3, I was furiously certain I hadn’t said it. The quote makes affirmative action a blacks vs. whites issue, when it isn’t. Affirmative action unjustly discriminates against all “overrepresented” groups, including Asians, who are as large a minority here (12.6 percent) as blacks and Latinos combined. And the Oct. 10 article about rebounding minority enrollment disguises that overall percentages of Asian and white students were reduced in order to increase black enrollment.

It’s possible I did say the quoted sentence somewhere in the course of four hours’ free discussion on the injustice of affirmative action. However, the article’s author, Kalari Girtley, picked this quote to represent my entire argument. As a black liberal female, she doesn’t want the public to know that special benefits for blacks, Latinos and Native Americans come at the expense of not only Caucasians but Asians.

Meanwhile at Thursday’s water gun raffle, DFA hardly spoke about guns and failed to address any of our arguments for them. In passing the moderator said that guns do not stop rape, and the only purpose in having a gun is taking a life. As we have said before, according to liberal gun researcher Gary Kleck, the 2000 National Crime Victimization Survey shows that guns stop 550 rapes a day, and that the gun is fired less than 1 percent of the time.

Leo Buchignani

Editor in Chief

The Orange and Blue Observer