Un-Affirmative Action...

Do you know about affirmative action?
It is supposed to mean, "policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender , or origin into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group".


So for example, to proliferate the education of African-American people to develop their general education level, Harvard University provide a MINIMUM quota for this community in their classes.


But what happened in my school is the exact opposite.


Under the reason "to proliferate general level of education,", they instead apply a MAXIMUM quota for student outside of Denpasar.


For me that is so unfair.


I completely understand their goal. This system is proposed by Diknas, because they want to make sure that not all smart student coagulate in Denpasar. By applying this system, smart student can actually opt back to local High School, therefore reducing brain drain from a certain regency.


But analyzing deeper, we see that it harms the right of the particular student to choose where they would like to study.
Take my junior in SMP as an example.
She's very smart, but she's not accepeted at my school. Why?
Because she's from Kuta. My school only accept 11 students outside Denpasar, and she's #12, with only a 0.09 margin from the #11 student.
But most importantly, without this system is applied, my junior will be ranked #66 overall, a VERY high standing, remembering that there are more than 500 people enrolling, and about 250 got accepted.
She's supposed to be happy now, but that smile was taken away from her because of other people.


Is this what do you call Affirmative Action?
For me, Affirmative Action should give benefit to those who are capable, but cast aside due to discrimination in the past.
This is basically giving benefit to those who may not be as capable, but in the mainstream community (Denpasar).
It is clearly against the law of equality (if there's any).


What do YOU think about it?