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Readers Write: College admissions, an exodus of young people, marijuana, Powderhorn

Watch out for biased AI.

August 12, 2023 at 11:00PM

Yale University, in New Haven, Conn., is pictured on July 27. (CHRISTOPHER CAPOZZIELLO, New York Times/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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In light of the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling disallowing colleges to flat-out ask for and consider their applicants' races, colleges are nudging students to mention their race via essay questions with prompts about identity and background. More versatile than a simple race drop-down box, these essays are being praised by a lot of my classmates, but I think people are forgetting the fact that colleges still want to know our races. When they could ask us, they did.

Employers have been here before. Not hiring someone based on things like age, disability or pregnancy is illegal, but necessity is the mother of invention — their solution to this was what I fear, but predict, colleges will turn to: artificial intelligence.

The AI that corporate recruitment software uses is trained to identify the "best" applicants, best for the company. AI scans résumés and all kinds of personal information, allowing it to pick up on discriminatory cues, like the fact that 29-year-old women often need maternity leave and that 64-year-olds often promptly retire. AI lets recruiters wash their hands of discrimination by transferring it to computers.

I don't think it's unethical for colleges to do their best to create a diverse student body with AI, but I'm concerned about a slippery slope. Admissions AI could quickly start to use the same dirty tricks it uses on behalf of employers to minimize financial aid paid out and maximize graduation rates: real discrimination.

Bennett Hilberg, Medina

YOUNG POPULATION

Tell stories of the influx

I read with great interest the Aug. 6 article "Minnesota faces exodus of youth." Readers may be interested to learn that the state's 18 private nonprofit colleges and universities routinely attract undergraduate students from other states, and many of these young adults stay in Minnesota after graduation. At Macalester, 14% of our students hail from Minnesota, and the rest come from the other 49 states and almost 100 countries. But more than 30% of our alumni choose to live, work and raise families here, enriching our communities with their presence and contributing to the local economy. While the article described the various reasons why young Minnesotans may go elsewhere for college, there's also an important story to be told about what students from outside Minnesota add to our state.

Suzanne M. Rivera, St. Paul

The writer is president of Macalester College.

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In "Minnesota faces exodus of youth" the Star Tribune reported on U.S. census data with profound impacts on the region's workforce and future: a net population loss of young adults ages 18-24.

To reverse this trend, we must give college students a reason to stay and work in Minnesota while they're still undergraduates. How? By making the Twin Cities a national hot spot for quality, paid college internships.

The logic is pretty simple. According to the National Association of College and Employers, undergraduate internship programs are the most effective workforce recruitment strategy for employers on college campuses. The more local internships we offer to Minnesota college students, the more college students are recruited to work and live in the state after graduation.

Making Minnesota a national leader for paid internships would also attract students who leave the state for college but return home for summer or winter break internship opportunities.

In the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, we are partnering with Greater MSP to equip local employers to offer more high-quality internships and have created a free internship tool kit for employers for that purpose. Now is a great opportunity for Minnesota employers to grow the number of internships to better serve the 200,000 undergraduate students enrolled across the state.

When higher education and employers come together to support student success, we can help our region grow — and retain — its own talent.

Ascan Koerner, Minneapolis

The writer is associate dean for undergraduate education in the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts.

MARIJUANA

How do we know this isn't racism?

A recent Star Tribune commentary discussed medical racism committed against minorities. Mentioned examples included the Tuskegee syphilis study on Black men in the South and the study of birth control pills on women in Puerto Rico ("Justice for HeLa heirs reveals lingering medical wrongs," Opinion Exchange, Aug. 5). The article called this use of nonwhite human guinea pigs "wrong" and "shameful." A different article in the paper discusses the opening of a second cannabis dispensary on tribal land ("State's second cannabis dispensary opens on tribal land," Aug. 5). For other parts of the state, stores selling recreational marijuana won't be fully open until 2025, if then.

I can't reconcile these two articles. No one knows what the effect of legalizing recreational marijuana on a wide scale will be. Are the Native Americans on tribal land in Minnesota the new guinea pigs? If experimenting on Black men at Tuskegee was wrong, and experimenting on women in Puerto Rico was wrong, why isn't experimenting on Native Americans in Minnesota wrong? Would the legislators who voted to legalize marijuana be in such a hurry to see cannabis stores in their neighborhoods? Maybe the plan all along was to test the product on nonwhite people far away. If no harm's done? Then legalization was a good idea. If it's harmful? Then future articles might mention the Minnesota Native American marijuana study as an example of medical and institutional racism.

David Wiljamaa, Minneapolis

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There was no sadder sight in Sunday's Star Tribune than that of THC aficionados smoking. After all of the lawsuits against major cigarette manufacturers in the 1990s, and the use of the proceeds to fund smoking reduction organizations such as Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco, we have come full circle by attempting to reap taxes from ... smoking. Smoking marijuana is at least as harmful as smoking tobacco. Yes, I agree that marijuana may be less harmful than, for instance, alcohol. But do we need to smoke it? Couldn't we allow THC consumption by oral methods only? Is the need for a THC fix so immediate that one cannot wait for 30 minutes to get the effect through oral use? What kind of signals do we send to our citizens when we make a stand against smoking tobacco and for smoking weed? The logic here is as murky as a smoking den.

Donald Narr, Crystal

POWDERHORN NEIGHBORHOOD

As vibrant as I remember it to be

As a child in the late 1940s and early 1950s, one of the joys of summer was to stay with my grandparents in south Minneapolis. There were kids to play with and there was the park, so big that it had a lake enclosed in it. After moving back to the Twin Cities in the late '90s, I have made an effort to attend the Powderhorn Art Fair, always parking close to where my grandparents lived and checking out their former home. Due to COVID, George Floyd, etc., it has been a few years since I had attended and wondered what kind of event it would be after all the negatives I had read.

It was fabulous! The park was clean and cared for, the vendors were welcoming, the visitors were friendly and respectful, young cleaners did a great job of taking care of trash, and when we had finished perusing the art the Tibetan momos made for a great lunch. We did not see a police officer the entire time we were there. Hats off to the entire Powderhorn team and community for a job well done! When we were leaving, a gentleman thanked us for coming — what a class thing to do. My grandparents would have been so proud of their former neighborhood, as am I.

Janet Wolden, Stillwater