The District Chronicles

Issue date: 6/26/03 Section: NEWS

Media Credit: File photo by Eleanor Konzman The recent affirmative action ruling has the youngers members of the D.C. metropolitan area pondering their chances for a higher education.

The decision came first as news blurbs across broadcast and news and Internet outlets Monday. The Supreme Court had ruled. Affirmative Action, as a principle, STAYS. Point systems and other racial quotas aimed at diversifying colleges and universities must go.

As reporters, lawyers, and civil rights activists lined up to debate the Court's ruling, some area teenagers also pondered how it would affect their future.

" I wasn't surprised by the ruling," said Malcolm Serrettes, a 17-year old senior at Edmond Burke High School in NW, Washington.

Serrettes's aspiration is to get into the prestigious School of Performing Arts at New York University. He believes affirmative action is still very necessary for giving minorities an equal opportunity, especially in admissions to public colleges and universities.

Since NYU is a private institution, Surrettes feels the ruling will not directly affect his chances of getting into the program of his choice. But there is the other affirmative action, the "legacy programs" benefiting non-minority students, which concerns Surrettes.

" White people still have affirmative action; its called White legacy," says Serrettes, of admission programs aimed at giving applicants, whose relatives are alumni, preferred admission.

Eighteen-year-old Jennifer Fu, a freshman at the University of Maryland, College Park, said she had never thought much about affirmative action and wasn't sure how much the ruling would impact on her.

Still, Fu said schools should reflect the various backgrounds of people in s society , and affirmative action programs are tools to achieve this.

"People will always have some bias or prejudice when hiring employees or choosing students for admission, affirmative action counters that," she says.

Rocky Canas is only 14, but he, too, is sure of the need for affirmative action programs that benefit minorities. "Everyone should have equal opportunity to succeed in life," said Canas, who is entering Oxon Hill High School in Oxon Hill, Maryland, in the fall.

Canas and several other area students hoped universities like Texas, California and North Carolina which had began backing away from affirmative action would reconsider, in light of this week's ruling for affirmative action.

"Affirmative Action is very necessary, minorities may lose a fraction of their edge without it," says Serrettes. " But maybe in 25 years there won't be a need for it."

Contact Joshua Garner at district_chronicles@hotmail.com.

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