Really?

The 10% Fight Is Back

The percent plan idea originated as a law in Texas to respond to court rulings against affirmative action, but has been used elsewhere with different cutoffs. In Texas, those in the top 10 percent of their high school classes are assured admission to the public university of their choice -- regardless of standardized test scores.

The idea behind the percentage plans is that black and Latino students, on average, don't do as well on standardized tests as do white and Asian students. In addition, Texas is a state with many high schools that are overwhelmingly Latino or overwhelmingly black. Since every high school has a top 10 percent, eliminating the testing requirement meant that these largely minority high schools were going to end up producing good numbers of Latino and black students who would be admitted -- without consideration of race in ways that might offend courts or critics of affirmative action -- to such competitive institutions as the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M at College Station.

In many respects, the plan has been a major success in Texas, helping the flagship institutions to admit more minority students than they would have been able to otherwise -- at least while the state was under a court order not to use affirmative action. But ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that public colleges could consider race in admissions, University of Texas officials have been pushing to get rid of 10 percent and to instead rely on other admissions strategies (including affirmative action). In the 2007 legislative session, the university was expected to win its fight, but at the last minute, the 10 percent system survived.

This year, UT officials are again asking for the admissions system to be changed, with William Powers, the president at Austin, telling the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors last week that 81 percent of freshmen are now admitted through 10 percent, leaving the institution with too little control over whom to enroll. “We’ve lost control of our entering class because we don’t have any discretion on the admissions,” Powers said. In California, where those in the top 4 percent are assured University of California admission, a faculty panel is recommending that up to 9 percent be admitted that way (although in a key difference from Texas, the California 9 percent plan would guarantee a spot somewhere in the university system, not on a particular campus).

With these debates going on, the new research may challenge several assumptions. The study was conducted by Kalena E. Cortes, an assistant professor of education at Syracuse University, and was presented last week at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association. Cortes used data from Texas on admission of students from various high school ranks to the state's more competitive and less competitive colleges, and then tracked six-year graduation rates.MORE

Too many legacy admissions not making the cut?

As for this?

Her findings go directly to a fear that some have had about the 10 percent plan and that others have about affirmative action generally -- namely that it could end up hurting the minority students it is supposed to benefit. According to this "minority mismatch" idea, minority students who earn admission to competitive institutions (either through a percent plan or more traditional affirmative action) are likely to do less well than they would have if they had enrolled at less competitive institutions. Advocates for this position say that minority students would be more likely to graduate and excel if they ended up at institutions without any mismatch risk. The mismatch argument is popular with some and criticized by others because of its political potency: It allows people to criticize affirmative action not for its its impact on white students, but on minority students.
But Cortes found evidence to rebut this assumption.
She found that minority students who attended selective colleges are 38 percentage points more likely to complete college within six years of enrollment than are the minority students who enroll at other colleges. While she found that some of the gap is based on student characteristics and high school characteristics, excluding those elements still left a gap of 21 percentage points.

I have no comment that is printable about that minority mismatch idea. The fucking patronizing assholes.

Dreamwidth invite codes

People, I've got more invite codes than I can possibly handle. I'm giving away five. Please come take em off my hands? Indicate you interest in comments, and then I'll LJ message you for your email. Comments not screened so DONT put email in comments.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Portland, Maine: Student Denied Diploma After Blowing Kiss - 06-16-09

Womanist Musings comments

All I can think of is expletives.

Late news links

NYC Clerk Unwittingly Marries Transwoman and Boyfriend


Kimah Nelson and Jason Stenson


After it went public, they revoked the license and registered them as domestic partners. There was much annoyance in the blogosphere because everyone from the Advocate to Pam's House Blend called them a gay couple at first, following the shitty reporting of the New York Post.

New Hampshire got marriage, my very belated congrats.


What Are The Yogyakarta Principles?

If you peruse international blogs that cover gender identity and sexual orientation issues, from time to time you'll see a reference to the Yogyakarta Principles.

What are they, you ask? Well, peeps, school is now in session.

In response to well-documented patterns of abuse of GLBT people, from November 6-9, 2006 a distinguished group of international human rights experts met on the campus of Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to outline a set of international principles relating to sexual orientation and gender identity.

The result of that meeting was the Yogyakarta Principles: a universal guide to human rights which affirm binding international legal standards with which all nations must comply.

The basic premise is that TBLGI people are all human beings and are equally entitled to human rights. The development of international human rights law has largely ignored them - as racial minorities were once ignored - as women were once ignored - as the disabled were once ignored.

So the people gathered in Yogyakarta logically applied established international human rights principles and made suggestions as to how these 29 principles apply to the situation of LGBTI people around the world.The Principles

Lafeyette from True Blood survived last season and there be hot hot hot spoilers to boot Thank heavnes cause he's the only goddamn reason that I will watch the show.

Apparently there is a good portrayal of a gay Middle Easterner on Nurse Jackie

TaNehisi Coates brings the writing, as usual

Nathan Bedford Forrest Has Beautiful Eyes

Dear AFI. Hurry the fuck up with the new album already.

AFI - Miss Murder (Director's Cut - Includes Prelude 12/21)

Money over lives, as per fucking usual

Fed contractor, cell phone maker sold spy system to Iran

Two European companies — a major contractor to the U.S. government and a top cell-phone equipment maker — last year installed an electronic surveillance system for Iran that human rights advocates and intelligence experts say can help Iran target dissidents.

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), a joint venture between the Finnish cell-phone giant Nokia and German powerhouse Siemens, delivered what is known as a monitoring center to Irantelecom, Iran's state-owned telephone company.

A spokesman for NSN said the servers were sold for "lawful intercept functionality," a technical term used by the cell-phone industry to refer to law enforcement's ability to tap phones, read e-mails and surveil electronic data on communications networks.

In Iran, a country that frequently jails dissidents and where regime opponents rely heavily on Web-based communication with the outside world, a monitoring center that can archive these intercepts could provide a valuable tool to intensify repression. MORE

asim pointed me to Al Giordano, who has the absolutely amazing article on teh cowardice of teh corporate media

Also, The regime was caught photoshopping their crowds apparently Oops!


Andrew Sullivan gathered some of todays tweets nicolas kristoff is pretty usually a docuhe, but his article tear down this cyberwall, is pretty interesting in parts.