MINORITY HOUSING SHOULD BE BANNED

BELOW IS THE THIRD IN A series of debates between our schizophrenic editorial self at the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. Our exchanges with ourself we're sorry to announce, have become increasingly vexatious.

ONLY ACADEMIA, the Land of the Paradox, could make enormous efforts to recruit minority students and then encourage their segregation once they arrive.

The euphemism for this strange policy is "affinity housing." Cutter

Hall, a haven for black students, is the most notorious example.

There's nothing wrong with students getting together around a common interest. But when that discrimination is based on skin color it should be outlawed. Whatever happened to Martin Luther King's vision of a color-blind society?

Whether or not students choose to live in such living arrangements is not the issue. Simply because it exists, it counters the learning that takes place when people who are different from each other live together in the dorms. It discourages the very purpose of diversity to learn from each others' differences.

Any official College policy based on skin pigmentation or dialect is an affront to the very people it aims to support. Dartmouth must do whatever it can to eliminate the availability of race-based affinity housing.