Our school newspaper, The Daily Texan, recently published a front-page article about how Asian Americans are "untouched by affirmative action." Basically, it was saying how percentage-wise, there are a lot more Asians at UT than there are in the state. It pointed out that if affirmative action were reintroduced into Texas schools, Asians would suffer cuz their seats would be given to other minorities.

Let me take a time out now to say that I think affirmative action is fundamentally wrong. Slavery ended a over a century ago; Jim Crow ended half a century ago... how long are we gonna pretend we owe people for past discriminations? Yea, ok, we were wrong to segregate in the past, but this reverse segregation we call affirmative action isn't making things any "more equal" - two wrongs don't make a right. It may have been necessary immediately after the fall of the Jim Crow era, but it has outlived its usefulness. The fact of affirmative action is that it leads to less qualified people getting jobs solely on the basis of their race. It's a double standard- if you give a black person preference, it's affirmative action; if you give a white person preference, it's discrimination.
I dunno, I mean, I recognize that there are very different ways of looking at this issue, depending on whether you're the one benefiting or hurting. And my view is probably a little skewed by the fact that I think I was shafted in college admissions cuz I'm an Asian American male. I bash affirmative action cuz I'm only familiar with it in terms of college admissions; I haven't witnessed the social environment in the workplace and the fabled "glass ceiling," so I can't speak about that... Man, there's like a zillion tangents I could go off on from this, but no time...

But yea, anyways, I pointed out the Daily Texan article cuz they interviewed me for it, and included this whole spiel about my accomplishments and whatnot... and then they proceed to get my name wrong. According to The Daily Texan, I'm 'Chun Tien "Daniel" Huang,' hahaha- it managed to cause a lot of confusion among people I knew who read the article. (Note: my name includes neither "Chun Tien" nor "Huang") Man, I recall even spelling out my last name for the interviewer, and they STILL managed to get it wrong... They probably searched the directory with "Huang" and pulled up the closest thing. And they paraphrased what I said to them a bunch... like I was saying how people who don't get into better schools use UT as a safety school cuz of the top 10% rule. Seriously... it's no mystery that half the Asians come to UT as their safety school or just cuz it's a sure thing... money's only the half of it.