THE BOYS' BRIGADE

Affirmative action is a policy that was originally mandated by President John F. Kennedy to try to get corporations and universities to hire and enroll people regardless of their race, gender, color, sex or national origin. There have been numerous court cases, including those by the Supreme Court, over the legality of affirmative action. As it stands now, it is constitutional to use affirmative action in enrolling students, but schools cannot have a set quota for any race or group. They can look at race and other details as a factor for enrolling students. Affirmative action is banned in some states by law, including for universities.People for and against the policy are often interested in examining affirmative action charts and statistics, especially those for education. Some people find that affirmative action has helped minorities get into more schools, while others feel it has had no influence. There are many statistics available online for people to examine.Indiana University, online at www.indiana.edu, has several reports on affirmative action plans for their campuses. The school must write these plans because they receive federal money to enact affirmative action at their school. The university looks at departments that are currently not utilizing many minorities and they try to hire more to fill the gaps, provided they are qualified. They also post statistics, including information on how many minorities they have hired and other data.The University of California, Los Angeles, online at civilrightsproject.ucla.edu, has a research paper done on affirmative action and its future. This paper looks at several charts and statistics that colleges have provided that depict how affirmative action has increased the numbers of minorities within the school. It also analyzes recruitment programs to provide statistics on those and how their implementation helped, or hurt, the affirmative action program at the school.