In response to the letters by T. Dwayne Young and Jewell Pospeshil, I would like to point out a few facts about minority scheduling privileges.

First, the minorities you are talking about are given the scheduling privilege because they are National Achievement (African-Americans) or National Hispanic Scholars, not simply because they are minorities. There are also National Merit Scholars. These “Caucasian” students receive the exact same scheduling benefits.

Funny, you forgot to mention them even though there are about three times as many. Students in the Honors Program get similar benefits as well. You must have forgotten them, too.

Second, scholarship students get priority for a reason. Often times, they begin Iowa State after completing many of their low-level classes in high school. Even though they are not sophomores, they are probably taking many sophomore classes.

Third, these are the students that the university is investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in. Of course, they are the ones the university wants to keep happy. If these students transfer, Iowa State University gets no return on all of that scholarship money. If a non-scholarship student leaves, you were paying them anyway, so they don’t lose a dime.

All I’m saying is, don’t pin the blame on minorities. There are many more Caucasians keeping you out of your classes than there are minorities.

Also realize that these students have worked very hard to get where they are. If you had put in all of that work in high school to get that scholarship, how would you feel if someone said these things about you? A lot of people worked very hard for that privilege, and you have no right to ask that it be taken away.

Guy Howard

Junior

Computer Engineering