LETTERS: Quick to close a student's hangout

To the Editor: For that is what they are doing: University Pinball's clientele is primarily composed of young black males. How does the University expect its students to interact and live within our community? By locking our doors and watching the police from our windows as soon as the sun sets? I am sure that there has never been any problems or fighting at Smokey Joe's or the Palladium. I guess it is not really illegal when it's white people in expensive bars. When I first came to Penn and started visiting University Pinball I was frightened. Frightened by being a white kid in a black environment. This kind of racial fear can only be fought by talking and interacting with people different than yourself. The arcade offered me an avenue for this communication. Right now Penn is afraid but instead of actually looking at what the arcade offers it is using its power and money to shut it down. For a school that tries to promote diversity and tolerance Penn is very quick to close, cart away and banish any element that jars with its brick and ivy motif. In closing, let me extend an offer to Penn and the officials who have worked so hard to close University Pinball: I'll bring the quarters if you want to grow up. Christian Stadler College '97 Too many credit card tables at Spring Fling To the Editor: Remembering the fun at previous Flings, I wandered through the Quadrangle to see this year's booths and bands. I flashed back to dancing shoulder-to-shoulder in the rain in lower Quad two years ago, and working the student fundraising booths. This year though, I was surprised. Half of the upper Quad vendors were, can you guess, credit card companies. We were graced with AT&T; and Commerce Bank, about five in all. As usual, these vendors did not politely stand behind their tables, assisting students who had decided they were ready to handle the responsibility of plastic. Instead, the competing tables were overstaffed with individuals stopping students every few feet. It seems strange to assume that college students, a majority of whom are dazed and intoxicated during this particular weekend, would either benefit from or appreciate this bombardment of credit card offers. I agree that there should be free commerce without University censorship and these vendors undoubtedly paid equal amounts for their advertising space. However, the constant presence of assertive credit card vendors on Locust Walk every day is adequate to educate students of their options. Perhaps it was planned that these credit card vendors would make students decide to go back to their rooms and drink even more alcohol than usual this Fling weekend. Samantha Hodge-Williams Wharton '97 Stop box-checkers the right way To the Editor: In Roberto Villanueva's column ("Put a cross-check on box-checkers," DP, 4/18/97), he decries the phenomenon of 'box-checking,' or falsely indicating ethnicity. While lying is never honorable, we have to examine this behavior in the context of the dubious goals and flawed logic embraced by current "diversity" initiatives. The problem lies in the widespread suspicion toward these queries. When I applied to Wharton, I, like many other Asian American applicants, took seriously the possibility of racial discrimination by top schools. By not moving actively to reinforce faith in their objectivity, these schools effectively gave me and many others a powerful reason to lie even as they demanded our integrity. (I chose not to honor the ethnicity question with a response.) In Villanueva's Orwellian world, the University's right to categorize human beings by ethnicity in the name of fighting discrimination is never questioned. State and EEOC diversity "goals" (formulated by people painfully ignorant of statistics) are legitimate for the same reason. Not only is separation of applicants into "regular" and "Latino" pools for evaluation just, but the box-checkers exploiting this two-tiered system "cheat all students of a fair chance at admissions" and perpetuate "discrimination against Latinos." In the real world, however, the logical paradoxes, obvious inconsistencies, and insulting implication that Latinos cannot meet the same standards as others are as embarrassingly transparent as the Emperor's new clothes. The key to stopping box-checking fraud is to remove the incentives provided by the perception of an ethnic spoils system. Box-checking will disappear if it becomes known as a pointless exercise. We can restore confidence in the University's integrity by taking concrete steps, including removal of the ethnicity question from the application and substituting Social Security numbers for the applicants' names. Because it is a deceptive and hidden act, box-checking is not a legitimate form of civil disobedience. But we should stop the box-checkers the right way, by displaying the integrity we demand. This fraud will disappear only as quickly as its incentives. We must stand against racial classification and for the importance of individual agency and a single standard. Having tutored Latino adolescents in Harlem, I have faith that Hispanics can achieve their full potential in an environment that regards them not as cookie-cutter representatives of a "community" but as individual Americans and the peers of everyone else. Does Villanueva? Timothy Lee SEAS '91, Wharton MBA '98