Don't sweat it. It'll be challenged and/or moderated. These things are controlled pretty strictly by politics, and MI (IIRC) proved itself to be a Democratic state last night.
Being a Democratic state didn't help California when the same legislation (practically word for word) passed a couple of years ago.
Fuck you, Ward Connelly.
On the other hand, minority enrollment in the UC system rebounded after an initial dip, if I remember it right. We'll see what the admissions people come up with.
In fairy-unicorn land, I dream of the day some white guy with a 3.5 who bitches he didn't get into law school because someone else took his rightful prep school place gets smacked down by a judge who says, 'son, you're just not that smart.'
For me, I dream of the day when there are no more ballot initiatives.
'son, you're just not that smart.'
Something must have happened to expectations and grading in the generations since I got out of school; I never graduated with that high an average from any level in my many years of schooling. If 3.5 isn't smart, what the hell do those grades mean?
If the guy is coming from a prep school, the 3.5 probably means that he's paying full tuition.
Cala, do you want to break the grading news to IDP, or shall I? The 3.5 means that learning to tie his shoes was a major accomplishment.
I graduated with a 3.5 from Michigan, and I'm still not that good with tieing my shoes!
Or with spelling "tying my shoes"!
All I meant was that it's often *hard* to get into a top law school, and I think a lot of the 'oh, but I'd be at Michigan if 'tweren't for affirmation action' whining should be tempered with a bit of realism. Not everyone gets into the top tier law schools, and the Man is not out to get you. Sometimes you can get into Yale and not get into other places!
8: Oregon, though, has come up with some pretty amazing laws via ballot initiative, like their well executed assisted suicide law and a nice effort (IIRC) at medicare rationing. It wouldn't surprise me if the eminently reasonable system of voting by mail was the result of a ballot initiative. Ballot initiatives are just as good as your electorate.
I find it difficult to Thai my shoes.
Memo to self: never, ever state own GPA in the vicinity of Unfogged.
Ballot initiatives are just as good as your electorate.
This is either trivially true (in the sense that you can form an ex post judgment of the electorate by looking at the result of some ballot initiative and saying, "Oh, so that was the quality of my electorate" based on your assessment of the initiative") or wrong (legislator's incentives are meaningfully different because they're repeat players).
I had an under 2 GPA for a semester at MIT, while I was in the process of dropping out -- two Cs and a D. I'd actually aced the midterm in one of the C classes, but managed to lose track of everything so fatally that my final grade came out to a C even when averaged with a perfect midterm.
Wasn't having a good time that semester at all.
My first semester in grad school, I took an algorithms course where the only graded work was a series of six problem sets. The first problem set was the hardest assignment I'd ever seen; when I got only a 15 (out of 100) and the woman sitting in front of me scored a 99, I pretty much cried like a little boy.
I think this was around the time when I realized that not only was I not working at the top level, intelligence-wise, but the people ahead of me weren't at the top either.
I graduated in the bottom half of my high school classt with a 2.79. I have no idea what my ranking was in undergrad, but I had a GPA of 2.94. I've got like a 3.6 going in B-school, but my program is a joke, so I''m not taking a lot of pride in it.
15: I admit I was exaggerating a bit in 8. Direct democracy is okay for local questions like issuing new bonds, but I think legislating should generally be the legislature's job. I can't get behind the idea of a majority of voters in a low-turnout election passing real laws even if I support those laws. It'd be like letting Congress pass laws with a 1/4 minority.
23: In general, I agree. I do however make an exception for things that relate to electoral matters, e.g., public financing of elections. Legislatures can't be expected to act on things like that, because they go against the interests of incumbents.