Asians Protest New U-Cal Admissions Policy For years Black and Latino education leaders have argued that admissions standards at the University of California System, which rely almost exclusively on two SAT subject exams, are biased against their students who tend to fair worse on standardized tests. Now new admissions criteria intended to make the process fairer are getting a thumbs down from angry Asian-American students who are over-represented in the system at 40 percent of the undergraduate population. Under the new admissions standards, the biggest change in UC entrance policy in nearly five decades applicants will no longer be required to take two SAT subject tests, greatly reducing the number of students guaranteed admission based on grades and test scores alone. The change, approved unanimously by the UC Board of Regents in February, takes effect for the freshman class of fall 2012. Proponents of the new plan note that it will greatly expand the applicant pool. But Asian-American families and advocates, want the policy rescinded, contending that it amounts to affirmative action for Whites. Education experts project that the it will sharply reduce Asian-American students across the system’s nine undergraduate campuses. “I like to call it affirmative action for Whites,” said Ling-chi Wang, a retired professor at UC Berkeley. “I think it’s extremely unfair to Asian-Americans on the one hand and underrepresented minorities on the other.” With 173,000 undergraduate students, Asian Americans comprise the largest ethnic group of undergraduate students, about 40 percent. They represent about 12 percent of California’s population and 4 percent of the U.S. population.

Alabama Councilman Destroys Rebel Flags A Black Alabama councilman, decrying the Bars and Stars as a racist throwback to a shameful period in U.S. history, yanked up several Confederate flags that had been placed on the graves of Civil War soldiers. Auburn City Councilman Arthur Dowdell is the target of outrage by such folks as Mary Norman, president of the Auburn Heritage Association, for his recent actions at the Pine Hill Cemetery. “He pulled up the flag, snapped it in two and put it in his car,” said Norman, describing the way Dowdell vanquished the symbol on her great-grandfather’s grave. Was Dowdell right for what he did? Read more.

Charles Barkley says he’s considering a run for governor. Former NBA star Charles Barkley was definite and specific about whether he could run for the governor or Alabama, saying, “I plan on it in 2014. … I can’t screw up Alabama,” he added, saying that with him at the helm of the state, there would be no place to go but up. “We are number 48 in everything, and Arkansas and Mississippi aren’t going anywhere,” he said during the interview, noting that his top priority would be education. “All the way education … the public school system in this country is the worst it has ever been and what that does is that hurts crime, it hurts the judicial system,” Barkley said. “You know if you don’t give people education and hope, they become criminals. They get involved in drugs. So we have got to fix the public school system. I think we need to make these neighborhoods safer. And the third thing, you have got to give people economic opportunity. America for far too long has a small group of people who have got all the money and then we got a bunch of poor people who have no money. And because we have killed the public school system they can’t get the education to make money, and that is just not right.”

College football player arrested for allegedly dealing cocaine
Senior Alabama defenseman Jimmy Johns has been charged with felony drug dealing after allegedly selling cocaine on his school’s Tuscaloosa campus. “He didn’t want them to know he was involved in it,” the West Alabama Narcotics Task Force’s Capt. Jeff Snyder says of Johns’ teammates. Coach Nick Saban moved quickly to cut Johns, whose bond was set at $120,000. “This type of behavior obviously will not be tolerated and he is no longer a part of our program,” Saban’s statement read. Alabama players have been involved in various legal scrapes and hit with suspensions recently. Police say they got tips about Johns’ alleged drug involvement just two months after Saban said of his players’ misconduct that “enough is enough.”