- NEW YORK -- A "whites-only"
scholarship set up as a prank by Republican students at an obscure New
England university has ballooned into a cause cÈlËbre, with
basic American themes such as race, equal opportunity and freedom colliding.
-
-
- "Why shouldn't I do anything in my power to put
myself in the best position possible?" asked Adam Noska, 20, after
winning the £130 award at Roger Williams University in New England.
"I'm a college student. I live in a house with rats."
-
- He had a point. But Mr Noska and his friends had also
challenged one of the orthodoxies of today's United States: that everyone
except the white majority is entitled to a hand up in life.
-
- And they did so on the culture war's main battlefield,
the university campus.
-
- The application form for the scholarship deftly parodied
the language of similar documents for black, Hispanic or American Indian
students seeking financial help for their education.
-
- "In 100 words or less, write why you are proud of
your white heritage and explain what being white means to you," it
read.
-
- "Must attach recent picture to confirm whiteness.
Evidence of bleaching will disqualify applicants."
-
- It soon emerged that the student who devised the protest
against the prevailing culture of affirmative action was one of its beneficiaries,
to the amusement of the stunt's critics.
-
- Jason Mattera, who founded the College Republicans two
years ago, is the recipient of a £2,600 bursary for Hispanic students.
It gave him "an inherent advantage over my white peers", he said.
-
- His "whites-only" scholarship idea attracted
so much support, some of it financial, that its value, originally a modest
£26, was soon five times bigger.
-
- But it riled many of the 3,000 students on the campus
and earned a rebuke from the local Rhode Island state Republican Party
for its "racist overtones".
-
- The students "have just ignored history and turned
blatantly, defiantly dumb", complained a columnist for a local newspaper.
"They taken higher education and brought it low."
-
- Across America, talk show hosts and newspaper columnists
went into a frenzy of agonising over the rights and wrongs of favouring
ethnic minorities or, alternatively, the theme of young people today and
their shameful ingratitude.
-
- Its timing to coincide with Black History Month, when
schools, academia and the press reflect on African-Americans, only made
the debate more piquant.
-
- At the same time, the joke also reflected a shift in
the political mood of young Americans both on and off campus. The era when
students were, almost by definition, Left-leaning liberals is over.
-
- Now, according to the latest surveys, there are almost
as many conservative as liberal students in higher education, a far cry
from 30 years ago when they were outnumbered almost three to one.
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
-
- http://WWW.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/21/wrace
21.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/02/21/ixportal.html
|
