Louisiana State University - Gumbo Yearbook (Baton Rouge, LA)

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Dean of Konum Ken ' s Housing omen ' s Housing food Smices Camachc with the tools necessary for a suc- cessful college career. Besides, the proposed policy would allow any student to enroll at the University after completing his freshman or sophomore years at one of the smaller state colleges. As for the argument that the selective policy would close the uni- versity to blacks: 1) Those students who were here for football season will be found to have been mostly white. 2) It ' s racist to say that no blacks in Louisiana could score over 15 or 16 on the ACT. 3) Only several hundred blacks have chosen to enroll at the University. Black leaders have bitterly fought any attempt to destroy the identity of Southern University. As educa- tional and economic opportunities improve for blacks, the need for Southern University may be ended. By that time, the same percentage of blacks should be able to meet the same selective admission require- ments as whites. When our new state constitution was passed, voters were presented with two alternatives for higher education. One would have placed the University under the same administration as the other state colleges. The other, the one voters approved, allowed the University to retain its separate administration and status. Thus, the Board of Supervisors has a mandate to estab- lish a unique university with higher standards than the other state col- leges. The administration will hopefully carry out its plan to aggressively recruit highly qualified, well-pre- pared students. But the University will have little more to offer than it presently does if it has to pour more of its resources into remedial pro- grams. Gifted students will tend to continue to see the University as mediocre and will continue to leave the state for private institutions in distant regions. Anyone who keeps an eye on the Camacho writings of popular opinionmakers will observe that the state universi- ties are being increasingly por- trayed as havens for students to take a four-year extended vaca- tion. If students don ' t support measures to raise the standards at the university they may find them- selves vulnerable to politically- motivated punitive measures which may increase financial demands on the students even further. It is true that Huey Long wanted a poor man ' s university but he also wanted one with a strong aca- demic reputation that would com- pare favorably with the great pri- vate universities of the East. Even he would recognize that we don ' t do anyone a favor by admitting someone to the University when he is unprepared to profit from the experience. David Cole Rayner Student Life 25

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Registration Meredith Meredith While observing the current debate over selective admissions, I am reminded of my experience at the University during my freshman year. The first semester history class was several times more crowded than the second semester class. And at the first session of the second semester, my professor remarked: Well, it looks as though those who were here for the football season have gone home. Those who oppose selective admissions proposals, including our SGA President, forget that we don ' t do a great favor to unprepared stu- dents by letting them spend a semester in limbo here. Some say the freshman year represents a weeding out process; why not do the weeding out before the students enter the University? Students who drop out after one semester con- sume a portion of the University resources that could be better spent. The current open admissions pol- icy is defended as being part of the University ' s tradition as a poor man ' s university open to all citi- zens of the state, and as a multi- purpose university including the applied sciences as well as the lib- eral arts. But the University also has a duty to be the university of the state. A multi-purpose university need not degenerate into a junior high school. The University must remain div- erse in composition of both the stu- dent body and its curriculum, but as a university it must be devoted to higher learning and not to those areas which should be the domain of elementary and secondary edu- cation. An open admission policy will not magically endow those graduates of inferior high schools Camacho 24 Student Life

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