Resolved: Affirmative action should be practiced in college admissions.

Greetings. I would like to start by thanking my opponent, Johnicle, for presenting this challenge and the tournament altogether. I'm sure it will be fun. "No matter how you look at it, people will treat women and people of other races differently. This is true whether it is subconsciously or not." Could you prove that? Do you have a credible source? Please cite. Thanks. "For example, if there are 2 whites for every 1 black in a community, and there are 99 blacks and 200 whites, it would make sense to give this limited college entry to the man with this built in disadvantage." This is racism. This suggests that (a) people of colored skin have some type of superiority over white people, and (b) colored people are not good enough to be accepted into a given institution on their own credibility. No matter how you look at it, it is racism in either direction. How would we define people of color? Would we start some type of melanin-testing scale to be cast on their application? Are their specific guidelines to how much pigmentation one must have to be eligible for affirmative action utilization? At what point are people colored "enough" to be eligible? This seems futile. It seems to me it would be much better to just admit the BEST candidate for the position at an institution. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for equality and justice for all. And that is exactly the way it should be; no race has supremacy over another race. Mandating the implementation of affirmative action "steps" is just stepping our way to inequality amongst members of our society. This is inherently unjust. "Either way, these decisions will leave someone out. It is therefore acceptable for either decision to be made (I.E. equal opportunity employer or affirmative action employer). This therefore proves the resolution true." Non sequitur. First of all, if two candidates were hypothetically equal, and only one can be admitted, is it not the institution's own right to choose who that person is? It seems that my opponent is suggesting that diversity is somehow superior to the own fundamental freedoms and liberties that are so intrinsic to the fabric of this nation. Sure, the institution CAN pick someone with higher levels of pigmentation in their skin, but still, SHOULD they? I contend that they should not NECESSARILY (but not necessarily that they should NOT) do that. Secondly, the chances of finding two candidates with the exact qualifications for a given institution seem to be almost negligible. Ergo, many times the institution would be inclined to favor the less qualified (even if only slightly) candidate to make their institution look favorable to the liberal proponents of affirmative action. If a private institution itself has a philosophy favoring diversity, then by all means they can choose whoever they feel necessary to be admitted. But this can be accomplished without governmental interaction and affirmative action-like "steps." However, no matter how appealing it may sound to people, the statement that a given level of diversity is better than a different level of diversity is only an opinion. I happen to favor diversity. But my opponent must recognize that private institutions reserve the right to choose the level of diversity they so like. I am not affiliated with private institutions. Therefore, I do not get to make the decisions best suited for that institution, nor should I. And neither should the government. It may indeed be the choice of the institution at times, but this raises the question of this debate topic: SHOULD it be practiced in college admissions? Merely because some private institutions may reserve the right to choose who and who is not admitted does not mean they SHOULD. Since when is it right to socially engineer the student populous at colleges and universities? I look forward to the coming rounds. Cheers, Oboeman.