Suppose that 30% of students are freshmen and 50% of students are male. assuming that these two designations are independent, what is the probability that a randomly selected student will be a male freshman?

We are asked to find the probability that a randomly selected student will be a male freshman.
The student being a male is one condition and student being a freshman is another condition. 
the student should be a male AND a freshman 
in probability when we are given the AND function, then both conditions should be fulfilled, then the two probabilities should be multiplied
Probability of student being male - 50 %
probability of student being freshmen - 30%
probability that student being both male and freshman is = 50% x 30 % = 15%
therefore answer is 15%

The probability that two independent events happen is the product of the individual events: 30%*50% = 15%.