During your speech in Osawatomie, Kansas yesterday you stated, “I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot. When everyone does their fair share. When everyone plays by the same rules.”

Just last Friday, however, your administration issued a guidance to universities encouraging and facilitating the use of racial and ethnic preferences in college admissions. The racial preferences at some universities are so great that black and Hispanic applicants are more than 500 times more likely to be admitted over similarly qualified white or Asian applicants. The validity of the guidance is, at best, debatable under the Fourteenth Amendment, Title VI, and the Supreme Court’s decisions in both Gutter v. Bollinger and Great v. Bollinger.

How does issuance of the racial preference guidance comport with your belief that this country succeeds when everyone plays by the same set of rules?

What is your definition of “fair shot” and “fair share?”

Yesterday you also stated, “Just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to the economic challenge with the same old tune. And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”

Who, specifically, has indicated that we’re better off when everybody plays by their own rules? When and where did that happen?

Could you please identify anyone in your administration who will permit us to fend for ourselves? If you find them, could you kindly promote them?