Style Weekly
Maggie Walker Defenders Present Weak Cases
Letter writers Mary Jo Sisson-Vaughan and Thomas Raper, parents of students at the Maggie Walker Governor's School (Letters, Aug. 26), challenged Paul Fleisher and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley's call for changes in the school's admissions policies and practices (“Maggie Walker's Diversity Complex,” Back Page, Aug. 12).
With opponents like these, Fleisher and Seigel-Hawley need no more advocates.
Sisson-Vaughan cites the similarities of Maggie Walker's demographics with those of the undergraduates at the University of Virginia and the College of William and Mary. While my wife and I have many reasons to be grateful for the opportunity we were given to earn degrees at William and Mary, our alma mater's feeble and, to date, woefully unsuccessful attempts to recruit a student body that is representative of the tax base that supports it, are not among them.
Exhibit A in Raper's “It's not broken, so by god, please don't fix it” argument is the rich diversity of vehicles that pull in and out of the school's parking lot on a daily base. Our family pays personal property taxes on a shiny, Bluetooth- and satellite-radio-equipped, low-mileage 2009 and a well-worn, well-dented 1997 Plymouth with one working radio speaker, two hubcap-less wheels and 150,000 miles. I owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Raper. Until I read his letter, I had no idea that a family of WASPs could be so racially and culturally diverse.
Bill Craig
Richmond
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