Editor:

The Guardian printed in its Jan. 10 article regarding the “”Pro-America Resolution”” that the Unified Campus Coalition is part of the Freedom Alliance. This is an error, either on the part of your reporter or on the part of the interviewee.

For any confusion that I personally may have caused by failing to take action to correct earlier inclusions of the UCC under the umbrella of the Freedom Alliance, I duly apologize.

While most members of the UCC, along with most students at UCSD, agree with the basic America-supporting tenets of the Freedom Alliance’s beliefs, there are those within our organization that I am sure do not support them.

As our goal is to encourage the mutual respect for differing opinions on this campus so that we may learn from each other rather than merely fight with each other; it would be against our ideology to support one specific side of a conflict.

Having said that, I do not believe that it would be a misrepresentation of our members’ beliefs to say that our members support the ideal of a diverse and benevolent America as well as the belief that we can only achieve this ideal by first interacting with others who think differently from ourselves.

Through interaction, we believe respect will be developed and our American ideal can then be truly fostered throughout the land by learning to see all others as unique individuals rather than as simply members of ethnic, religious, racial or political classes.

I hope that it is now clear that the Unified Campus Coalition is a nonpartisan organization. We encourage students of all political ideologies to participate in our club and UCC-sponsored events, such as our inaugural event, “”A Religious Experience”” which will be held Jan. 30.

Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to clarify our club’s position.

— Brian Brook

Co-Chair

Unified Campus Coalition

Author overlooked merits of affirmative action

Editor:

In regards to The UCSD Guardian, vol. 105, issue 2, page 4, the opinion section titled “”Fighting the wrong battle …”” by Daniel Watts:

In his article, he criticizes preferential treatment as a way to achieve campus diversity. I believe some of his arguments are flawed.

He first states that “”racism is not a factor in UC admissions policy because the current policy has been colorblind since the passage of Proposition 209.”” Being colorblind in this case is a bad thing.

The racial distribution throughout many high schools (such as our own San Diego ones) are very stratified. And as Watts points out, some schools do not have the advantage of AP courses or S.A.T. prep classes.

Thus, no matter the caliber of the student, they are unable to compete with students who come from the privileged schools. Being “”colorblind”” is being blind to these disadvantages among certain high school students.

He also criticizes the statement “”People must say we work harder!”” by responding “”heaven forbid anyone should engage in hard work.””

This statement from the rally (which I attended) was completely taken out of context. The presenter was referring to affirmative action opponents who claim that “”the reason minorities are not getting into college is because they just don’t work hard.”” As I have already shown, sometimes it’s determined by what school you live by, not how hard you have worked.

Watts also says that colored people are heard plenty around campus. He refers to the Cross Cultural Center and lists several SAAC organizations.

But why do you think we need those organizations in the first place? For the most part, they are the only places we can share as a minority community.

And Ross Frank is only one of a very few that have direct contact with Chancellor Robert C. Dynes. It is not a folly to argue that affirmative action is ignored if Dynes’ staff consists of two or three minorities compared to 10 or 20 non-minorities.

In all respects, I do agree that the 4 percent plan in addition to outreach efforts are good ways to increase diversity.

But preferential treatment is still necessary to combat the racism that has prevented a truly diverse campus between all minorities (I’ve heard many students say, “”We have a lot of minorities, look at all the Asians.””) They fail to realize the number of African Americans or Native Americans.

— Aldrin Lumbreras Warren sophomore