To the Editor: I applaud Julia Gottlieb's column, ("Strengthening campus equality," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 3/6/01) but I can't help but wish that she had taken her argument a step further. She addressed the issue of affirmative action for white students in the form of preferential admissions policies for legacies, but white privilege extends much deeper into American culture. Social and political networks, standardized tests, school curricula and most other aspects of American society favor white students above all others. Anyone who thinks that the playing field is level for people of all colors and creeds is sorely mistaken. Only too recently have I fully realized that being white means never having to explain myself, and never having to stand out in a crowd. It means that my race becomes an issue only when I want it to. Affirmative action is but the smallest step in bringing some semblance of equality to the American way of life.
Hank Willson College '01
Ivy League is unique
To the Editor: The Ivy League is better off without a postseason tournament ("It's tournament time," DP, 3/2/01). These tournaments only serve to make the college basketball regular season nearly meaningless. A team can struggle for an entire season, but if it can pull it together for three games in three days in March, it can go to the NCAA Tournament. The Ivy League is unique in this matter because the season is very important. Would the final three games with Brown, Yale and Princeton have mattered one bit if we were going to face them in a tournament the next week? Not at all. It is also not fair to the regular season champion. The two months (plus two months of nonleague games) of hard work it took to win first place can go for naught with one bad showing in the conference tournament. It is also not likely that a tournament would bring more recognition to the Ivy League. Do more people really pay more attention to conferences like the Sun Belt, Southwestern Athletic or Trans-America because they have postseason tournaments? Of course not. Attracting fans could also be a problem. Ivy teams, with the exception of Penn and Princeton, often have less than 1,000 fans at their games. This is not likely to change in a tournament. Even if it were held at the Palestra, would anyone turn out to see Columbia-Brown or Cornell-Dartmouth in the first round? A tournament is not the answer. It's likely to lose a lot of money, and it would take the meaning out of the regular season.Terry Adams College '04
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