Race. Gender. Religious affiliation. Age. National origin. Sexual inclination.
These are just a few of the growing list of criteria that cannot legally be used to make decisions on many important matters.
If you have a job to fill, an apartment to rent, or any other benefit to confer, you better be careful — discrimination is against the law.
California is the trendsetter in progressive politics, so it’s no surprise that the next great anti-discrimination trend is emerging there. It is now illegal to discriminate in favor of INTELLIGENCE.
Cuesta College’s Nursing School has stopped using grades as criteria for admission — they now use a lottery. The school’s new policy is a response to a directive from the Chancellor’s Office that stated that “artificial barriers” to professional programs should be eliminated. Cuesta decided that grades were an “artificial barrier.”
This all came as a rude surprise to Judy Downing. She had dreamed of doing “something that’s more fulfilling, something for mankind.” So after a full day of work as an electronic technician, Ms. Downing spent four hours a night taking anatomy and microbiology classes. Then, after spending eight hours at work and four hours at school, she would start studying, usually beginning at 11:00pm.
Judy’s work paid off — or so she thought. She got all A’s in the required courses. But Judy was working on an outdated assumption — that merit would have something to do with the selection criteria at the nursing school. Foolish indeed. Cuesta picked the 38 future nurses in a lottery — pulling names at random from a group of 156 applicants who met minimum qualifications. Judy Downing’s name was not pulled from the hat.
“We can’t discriminate in favor of students who get A’s over students who maybe getting B’s,” said Ann Grant, dean of instruction for nursing at Cuesta. Most students admitted to the nursing school in pre-lottery days had A averages — now a student with all C’s has the same chance as a straight A student.
Another student, Susan Jolly, also didn’t make the lottery selection. “You work so hard for so long to get really good grades in really hard classes. (Then) you find out it really doesn’t matter.”
Here at the DO we applaud this trend. Regular readers will have long ago realized that we’re not too intelligent or articulate. We’re also not aesthetically advantaged. Of course, we abandoned virtue when it went out of style, so long ago. Since we have little in the way of brains, looks, or character, we think the brave new system of advancement by lottery could do wonders for our future prospects.
Just think — if trends continue, we’ll be able to become chairman of Microsoft. (Our lack of knowledge of computing is clearly an artificial barrier.”) Hollywood starlets will be compelled to accept our amorous advances. (No discrimination in favor of handsome men will be tolerated.) And we’ll set a new precedent by designing the next generation of nuclear weapons. (We had previously thought this door was closed to us, just because we failed our “Physics for Poets” class in college.)
We’re also looking forward to performing open-heart surgery, perhaps assisted by a team of Cuesta-trained nurses.
never doubt the power of stupid people in large numbers
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This is typical of our current guilt-ridden need to lower standards to the lowest common denominator. The idea is to put “fairness” ahead of competance or achievment. This is one of the great injustices of our time, and it makes me sick every time I hear about it.
What we need is a meritocracy; what we have is a loserocracy.
Imagine you are very sick and could possibly die. And you are in a hospital. Which nurse do you want to inject you with medicine? The one that got C’s and HALF the answers WRONG. Or the one that got 99% of the medical answers RIGHT. Nobody wants garbage. Get it straight for once in your life.