Defend Need-Blind Admissions at Macalester
from the Macalester Public Knowledge Base
DNBAM is the name of the mailing list (dnbam@yahoogroups.com that 70 Macalester students, alumni and faculty/staff advocating for the defense, and further expansion of the Need-Blind Admissions policy at Macalester used between April of 2004 and March of 2005 to coordinate action and discuss strategy. Its messages are archived and available publicly here.
For a description of the campaign itself, see Need-Blind Admissions at Macalester
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[edit] Formation
The story of Defend Need-Blind Admissions at Macalester, or DNBAM for short, is a funny one. In April of 2004, students decided they needed a means of communicate in coordinating their nascent anti-RPC recommendation movement. Yongho Kim moved for the creation of a mailing list, and first set one up using Yahoo! Groups and called it Need-Blind Now!, or NBN but then realized that 1) outsiders may be confused as for the context of the movement (where is it happening?) and 2) Macalester had not yet eliminated Need-Blind, and renamed the group to KNBAM. (Keep Need-Blind Admissions at Macalester) [1] Later in June, upon receiving a spam email from a libertarian candidate for the 2004 U.S. Presidential Elections ([2]) and the subsequent complaint from subscribers ([3] [4]), the name was changed to DNBAM (replacing "Keep" for "Defend") to fool away email-collecting robots. [5] [6]
When the Mac Weekly later picked up the story in September of 2004, they were either 1) distant/ignorant from the activist arena or 2) just wanted to stir controversy, (because the submissions were low), and described DNBAM as if it was some sort of organization. The Mac Weekly called Need-Blind advocates "DNBAM Officers". The misinformed label stuck, and the Macalester campus has since then been referring to DNBAM at the same level as the RPC, and have talked about "DNBAM position"s, "DNBAM meetings", and of course, the "DNBAM report".
See also: Sensationalism: Mac Weekly's approach to campus issues during 2004-05
