I personally know very well that the proportion of Tamils in the law college is even higher than their proportion in the general population. Most of them study in English medium. Lack of Tamil language entrants doesn’t mean a thing. Many Sinhalese students study in English as well and the number of Sinhalese language entrants is remarkably low.

Tamils say that the “standardisation” which assigned quotas for every ethnic group in the 60s or 70s was discrimination. At that time, there were many great Tamil schools in Jaffna and elsewhere (which are now refugee camps). If this ethnic quota system was wrong then, it should be wrong now, even if the situation has reversed. Admissions should only be based on the academic aptitude of an individual applicant, not his or her ethnicity, language or place of origin. Positive discrimination all over the world is extremely controversial and causes bigger problems than what it attempts to solve, as seen by our past experiences.

Nevertheless, the Sri Lankan government does have regional quotas for each district and surprise, the Tamil majority districts are the most under-performing ones and hence Tamil students have lower cut off marks for entrance into most university faculties. For example, a Tamil student from Kilinochchi can get into a university law faculty with a Z-score of 0.8xxx, while a Sinhalese student from Galle would need about 1.6xxx. The Law College does not have regional quotas because most students actually study in private insitutes in Colombo for the law college entrance exam, hence have access to equal facilities.

So even if positive discrimination is abhorrent, and ethnic quotas are illegal, Sri Lanka still practices affirmative policies for “disadvantaged” regions that end up benefiting the Tamils more than the Sinhalese.

This however does not apply to the law college entrance, and there are no grounds for these protestors’ complaints. The only reason they didn’t get in was because of their own under-performance.

More importantly, Tamil language papers are prepared and marked by Tamil professors and everything is overseen by academics of all ethnicities.

Finally, setting aside quotas for students of a particular ethnicity would violate the Sri Lankan constitution not to mention the internationally accepted norms and standards and would be seen as discrimination by non-Tamil students. The cut off mark should be the same for everyone regardless of their language and ethnicity.