I vaguely remember the first time I got an “A” on my report card. I tried to hit dad up for that bonus all my friends were getting when they brought home their report cards.

Being very excited, I held out my report card, and I noticed that he wasn’t as exuberant as I was. “Well, that’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?” he asked.

Uh, well, there wasn’t much I could say to that one. Dad always has been pretty logical.

He wasn’t going to whoop and holler when I did something I was expected to do in the first place, and he certainly wasn’t going to fork out a bribe for it.

NIU’s affirmative action plan has taken this logic and thrown it out the window. Academic departments now will receive a treat for the hiring of minorities.

Under a new plan introduced by NIU Provost Kendall Baker, $100,000 will be set aside in the academic affairs division to “encourage” minority hiring. This includes blacks, Hispanics and native Americans.

Yes, that’s right, now affirmative action has gone one step beyond offering an equal opportunity to minorities. Now bribes are offered to departments to encourage the hiring of minorities.

When a minority is hired for a tenure-track position, an academic department will receive an amount equaling two-thirds of the salary for that faculty position.

Hey, if your department needs more funding, just hire a minority. That’ll get you a few extra bucks.

And guess what else, this money can be used for things such as equipment needs and even faculty travel. Come on, let’s get moving! Departments have just been waiting for the opportunity to receive more funding, and man, here it is.

I’d say that’s a pretty sick attitude, wouldn’t you? Well, if you think those kinds of thoughts are not going through the minds of department heads right now, baby think again.

This, I believe, is not only discrimination at its worst—a degradation to minorities and non-minorities alike. Try and tell me that if there are two equally qualified applicants for a job, one white, and one black, who will fill that position.

Now no one is saying hire a minority before a white, right? They’re just saying “We’ll slip you a little something extra to increase the number of minorities here at NIU. After all we are trying to get rid of our ‘racist’ reputation.”

This plan will encourage hiring minorities for the purpose of filling a quota and adding to a department’s piggy bank.

The NIU English department chairman said the program is designed to “award departments who are taking affirmative action in hiring.”

President LaTourette said, “We’ll have to cut corners in other programs…” to come up with the funding.

If that doesn’t beat all. Not only are we going to bribe departments to do what they should do in the first place, but let’s just make some cuts here and there from other programs to do so!

The fact that departments have to be offered money to “encourage” affirmative action is almost beyond belief and certainly beyond all understanding. Why do these departments need this kind of bribe? Is someone not doing his job? Do we need to fill a quota of minorities?

Let me get this straight, NIU wants minorities equally represented on this campus and the best resolution it can think of is to offer bribes to be sure it gets done.

Yes, I do agree that something does need to be done to combat discrimination. But if our administrators think the problem is so bad that we need to offer money in order to get people to hire minorities, then the problem is with those doing the hiring. And if that’s where the problem is, get rid of the problem.

If the department heads, and deans are not doing their jobs, get someone who will. I don’t think this is the case, but on the other hand if they are, why in the world do you have to pay them to be moral. You cannot bribe someone to get a job done correctly. I can guarantee you, it won’t work.