Resolved: Affirmative action should be practiced in college admissions.

Opponent states: "I agree in that affirmative action does not ban the use of the interviewing process, but PRO's job is to uphold affirmative action." I understand my job and the con brought up the use of the interviewing process as a reason affirmative action should not be implemented. To that I simply stated the interviewing process can definitely be used, thus upholding affirmative action. My opponent makes a case for why this is worse for students: 1) Con attempts to make the case that students are not chosen based on intellect. This is simply not true. I agree that standardized tests are not the best barometer on the intelligence of a person, but if a person is a bad test taker or blanks out, then would the university not want to take someone that doesn't fold under pressure like the aforementioned person does? Once again affirmative action doesn't really apply to the case you're trying to make since you're assuming one person did well on the ACT/SAT and another did poorly. Looking at the scores, one is better than the other and that has nothing to do with race. 2) In his second argument he tries to make the case that most colleges have 2-3 dominant ethnic groups. He finds this to be problematic for minority groups; however AA would help them in this case. If a college is largely of a certain group, AA guarantees that minorities are represented. As for the bullied part, this is not a debate about how people will fit into college. It is highly unlikely that racism occurs in extreme forms like that on college campuses these days anyway and the person that is subjected to "bullying" made the decision to go there in the first place. If bullying were to happen then the applicant probably wouldn't have applied there. At the end of this argument he says, "Although other process's don't stamp [AA] out, it is not as bad." He just said AA is not as bad so I'm not really following his case. I'm assuming he meant something else and it just didn't come out right. Next he constructs a case for why AA is bad for teachers: 1) Apparently you haven't been to college. If you're behind and doing poorly in the class, the professor will fail you and not feel sorry about it. Colleges are collecting your money so they don't care about your grades. It's not like high school where the teachers are subjected to teaching down to the lowest level of intelligence in the classroom. Professors teach what they want and you either understand it or you don't, but it is not their problem. Also AA doesn't take a person of inferior intellect and allow them entrance over a smarter person. AA applies with people of similar intellect meaning if a person were to struggle or do well in a class, then so would've the person that did not get in to the school. Finally he makes his case for why AA is bad for the schools: 1) He states lower intellect is bad for the college. Like I said in the rebuttal for why it's bad for teachers; AA doesn't take a person of inferior intellect and allow them entrance over a smarter person. Schools aren't forced to accept students with low intellects. Furthermore... "Whilst Affirmative action may make things fairer, it can make things worse for the college." My opponent concedes AA makes things fairer. This isn't a debate about what's best for the college, but whether AA should be practice and if it makes things fair, then by all means AA should be practiced. I will humor him however and say that AA is not bad for colleges. Earlier he states, "[AA] is also a lazy process" AA makes the admissions job easier and also saves time and money by not forcing tons of interviews upon the college. He calls that "lazy". It's more of a dollars and cents deal and it allows the college to save money, which does not make things worse for the college, but rather makes things better. None of that matters since it's not what we're debating, I was just pointing out the flaw in con's thinking. Since con basically conceded the debate by saying AA makes things fairer there is no real reason to go on, however I will continue to pick his case apart. My opponent's final points are this: 1) "It's used sparingly" - That is not a reason for it to not be implemented. This is like saying, "Well, I don't use pens very often so I don't think I'll get one." It may not be used often because you have a laptop, but when there's a test or writing assignment in class it is very useful to have and you'd be screwed without one. So the occurrence of usage is not grounds to dispel its implementation. 2) My opponent calls AA racist. He previously stated AA makes things fairer and therefore cannot be racist. In closing, AA helps college admissions and more importantly it spreads equality. My opponent has given no reason as to why AA should not be practiced. Thank you for reading this debate (if you skipped down to this point of the debate, I don't blame you because I would do the same thing and don't bother reading the rest, because I totally won) and thank you to the people that took time out of busy day to judge this debate. I would also like to thank Mr. Cumbee for setting up the tournament, although it didn't come out of his busy schedule since he has no life outside of debate (jk I love you Luke). And finally and most importantly thank you for the debate Panda. I have enjoyed it and good luck throughout the tournament.