To the editor:

Ted Spencer, director of admissions at the University of Michigan, blames the recent drop in minority applicants at his institution on the controversy over last June’s Supreme Court decision disallowing the awarding of extra points to members of minority groups and especially on those individuals who spoke out against race-based admissions. In a passage whose style seems a true mirror of his thinking processes, Spencer speculates: “The residual kinds of impact of all this discussion and dialogue, particularly from the other side of this issue, that diversity is bad, it makes a lot of students think, ‘Well, maybe I don’t want to be put into that sort of environment.'”

Equating opposition to racial preferences with dislike of diversity is like equating opposition to the Patriot Act with dislike of national security. It is the feeblest and most mean-spirited kind of straw person argument — one that ignores the real objections of serious people to a policy of systematic institutionalized discrimination.

Preston Fambrough,

Baldwin