BAMN's Bark is Worse than its Bite

by James Justin Wilson
With the idea that their “Voices will be heard,” BAMN and other Pro-Affirmative Action groups on campus staged a rally masquerading as a discussion in Angel Hall on the Sept. 22. This event stemmed from the recent decision to allow interveners into the two pending lawsuits against the University of Michigan concerning its raced-based admission policies.

During the week prior to the meeting, it was hard to miss all of the BAMN activists promoting the “discussion.” They passed out hundreds, if not thousands of leaflets to students on the Diag. They placed posters in almost every hall on campus. They even asked for class time to speak about their cause, in packed auditoriums, and got it. Yet after all of this work, they successfully motivated only twenty-five students to attend their meeting.

BAMN may have a presence on campus, but if this event is any indication, it just doesn’t have a following. Although they titled their rally “Our voices will be heard,” they seemed to forget that the only people listening were themselves. As the meeting progressed, nearly everyone in the audience eventually identified themselves as an affirmative action supporter or a BAMN member. Thus, the apparent meeting’s purpose was not to let the student population know whom the student interveners are and why they are doing it, but just to rally the converted.

After waiting half an hour for “more people to show up,” as the organizers announced, the meeting began with Shanta Driver, a second year law student at Wayne State University in Detroit. She proceeded to explain the historical matters behind the current Affirmative Action policies. She claimed that because minorities have been systematically put at a disadvantage, that they deserve some kind of reparation. More precisely, she stated that not only is the U-M’s current affirmative action admissions policy, but that it is “impossible to find out intellectual ability in just a four hour test” (i.e. the SAT or ACT) and in one’s high school GPA (roughly a four year test). Rather, she thinks that universities should base admissions upon one’s level of suffering.

Yet, Driver offers no solution to her compliant about traditional acceptance policies. It is inconceivable that Michigan could objectively measure each applicant’s “level of suffering.” Would the University have to go to each and every applicant’s home and examine their living conditions? Additionally, getting into a University should not be viewed as a reparation, but rather as a reward for hard, challenging work in high school. It is not society’s payment for suffering.

After explaining the history surrounding Affirmative Action policy, Driver and the other speakers indicated their hope for the future. Stating that their “aim is to mobilize a new militant civil rights movement.” Driver said the she expected that the U of M will likely lose the pending lawsuit, unless the judges in the case see that there as a movement behind the defense.

If this meeting was any indication of the new militant civil rights movement, then they have a long way to go. In fact, the only thing that is true about the movement is that it is militant. In their propaganda handed out prior to the meeting, it stated that “By Any Means Necessary” includes means not “deemed legitimate.” Essentially, their concept of “militancy” means breaking the law to get what they want. BAMN and its cohorts are like bratty children who throw fits and tantrums when don’t get when they want. Despite this, they believe that by breaking the very laws that the legal system upholds, they can sway the system’s opinions in their favor. Something just doesn’t add up.

They have wasted enough students’ time, money, and patience fighting for something that has no conceivable support. BAMN is just a barking dog and someone needs to call the dogcatcher and have it put to sleep. MR