Even Doug B. Rand '98, who characterizes himself as a supporter of limited affirmative action, says he has felt frustrated with the system.

"I applied to this summer program at the Department of Energy last summer, and by federal law, at least 50 percent of the internships they offered had to be filled by women. I didn't get the job, and I was angry for a while," Rand remembers.

But he warns against backlash: "I don't know how qualified the other applicants were, and so it seems kind of pretentious to say that I didn't get the job just because they needed women."

The Grandfather Clause

Currently, the most volatile debates arise over perceptions of exclusion and qualification, rather than philosophical definitions of equality of opportunity.

"In some cases, basing competition on race just doesn't work," David L. Boggs '98 says. "There's always the case of the rich Black kid from New York City beating out the poor white kid from Appalachia. That's not fair."

Students opposing affirmative action say Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO), Inroads and other high-paying, high-prestige minority recruitment programs create racial tension during the summer job search, and even after graduation.

"I was in Inroads, which is a program that gives minority students an internship for all four summers with high-powered firms," Torres says. "You get paid a lot. It's a really sweet deal actually, but I always felt like I was getting a job solely based on the color of my skin, so I quit."

"It's essentially a big tax write-off for the companies--they can say they are helping minority kids and everything," she adds.

"I'm not comfortable with racebased internships, although it's obviously up to the corporation," says Brian E. Malone '96, the president of Peninsula. "But if I were running a top investment banking firm, I would prefer to base my hiring decisions on the most qualified, rather than race."

But advocates of affirmative action say race-based scholarships are no different than hiring practices or admissions policies which do not explicitly take race into consideration.

Carsey Yee, a graduate student and resident tutor in Adams House, says "even if there were no concept of affirmative action, hiring would still be done on a racial basis. You'd have a bunch of 35 year-old white boys hiring another 35 year-old white boy, because people hire the people they feel most comfortable with."

Javier Romero "95 says his current feelings are summed up by a comic strip he recently saw: "An old white man asks this Black woman if it hurts her self-esteem to know that she got her job solely on the basis of her gender and race. She says no, and then asks him the same question."

Some students say they believe affirmative action leads to the admission or hiring of less competent candidates--although almost everyone agrees Harvard's minorities are more than qualified.

"Black students are less qualified than other students based on grades, SAT scores and other special skills like piano playing or athletics. However, I would be hard pressed to say that Black students are not qualified to be at Harvard," Malone says. "I would question weather the qualification for Blacks are the same as the qualifications for whites. In 1987, Derek Bok said that if it wasn't for racial preferences, less than one percent of Harvard students would be Black."