Adam

Adam April 1, 2004

Writing for the 21^st Century Ms. Gokturk

In little more than six months from now, high school juniors like myself will begin filling out college applications. In addition to the specter of writing numerous essays, it is likely that we will face a question on the application that looks something like this:

(Optional) What is your race: _______________________

(Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, American Indian, Eskimo, Other)

By now, we are all aware of the purpose of this question. Colleges are categorizing the applications they receive by race so that their admission decisions will create diversity in their incoming freshman class. This question has a long history behind it and it touches a nerve in many Americans for it challenges us to confront our feelings about race and equality.

A Brief History of Affirmative Action in Education

The desire to create a campus that has students of differing backgrounds including those who might not otherwise have access to higher education is certainly a noble goal. It grows out of decisions made as far back as 1961 when then president, John F. Kennedy created the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. Shortly thereafter, President Lyndon Johnson framed the policy that became known as Affirmative Action. It reflected the opinion that the civil rights laws that had been passed did not go far enough to erase the wrongs of discrimination. It stated that there must be an affirmative action to redress past injustice and that, “This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights (Infoplease).” Although initially promulgated to improve the hiring of African-Americans in the workplace, affirmative action policies are also used by colleges and universities to enhance their enrollment of minorities.

In recent years, affirmative action policies in college admissions have come under attack. It has been argued that, “By granting special treatment to certain groups on the basis of race, affirmative action highlights racial distinctions and exacerbates racial conflicts” (Graglia 47). It is easy to see why. In studies that examine the admissions records of five of the most selective universities, the statistics show the impact of how the, “What is your race?” question is answered. In 1989, for applicants who scored in the 1200-1249 range on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the probability of being admitted if you were white was 19% as compared to 60% for African-American candidates (Bowen and Bok 26). With competition for admission into selective institutions getting more and more cut-throat with each passing year, the effect of affirmative action policies becomes more and more visible and almost all college-bound students here at Schreiber will be impacted by them.

Quotas and Affirmative Action – Legal Challenges

From the period between 1967 and 1976, African American enrollment in Ivy League institutions rose from 2.3% to 6.3%, an almost three-fold increase which demonstrates the encouraging results of affirmative action policies at these institutions (Bowen and Bok 6). However, in 1978 the United States Supreme Court handed down its conflicted ruling in the case of Bakke v. University of California Davis Medical School and the rules began to change. In this case, Alan Bakke a white applicant who had twice been denied admission into UC Davis’ Medical School discovered that the institution had systematically reserved sixteen of its one hundred available spaces for minority applicants. These minority candidates had MCAT scores and grade point averages lower than his and he sued for admission contending that the admissions policy was discriminatory against him. Four justices felt that the Davis policy was indeed unfair and discriminatory while four other justices believed that race consideration was a valid consideration for admission and the policy should stand. Justice Lewis Powell wrote the court’s lead opinion that the use of strict quotas for determining minority admissions was indeed unfair and unlawful and Bakke was ordered admitted. However, he also ruled that race consideration was acceptable if part of a larger review process (Skrentny 226). The ruling was not specific as to the nature of the review process nor did it give any real guidelines for schools to follow except for the impression that racial preferences were acceptable, just not within the context of specific numbers of admissions candidates.

For almost twenty years the Bakke decision with its affirmation of race as an admissions criteria was the ruler by which affirmative action programs in education were measured. The overall number of blacks who graduated college during the period from 1960 to 1995 rose from 5.4% to 15.4% (Bowen and Bok 10). The race-based admissions policies had clearly resulted in a far greater number of minority candidates entering and completing college. But what about white applicants? The Dean of Cornell’s Industrial Labor Relations College (one of Cornell’s seven undergraduate colleges), David B. Lipsky noted in 1995 that, “The only difference is that today you have more borderline whites losing out to [the] beneficiaries of affirmative action programs” (Zelnick 123).

It was just this adversely impacted group who once again would bring a legal challenge to race-based admission policies, only this time in the state of Michigan.

In 1997, Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher filed suit against the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor claiming they had been denied admission as undergraduates because they were discriminated against by virtue of being white, while minority candidates were admitted with lower credentials. Barbara Grutter, a white woman filed a similar lawsuit alleging her rejection to the University of Michigan’s law school was also the result of the school’s affirmative action policy. On June 23, 2003 the Supreme Court ruled (5-4) that in Grutter, the law school’s policy of favoring minorities was legal as it was part of an overall policy of thorough, individual review and was narrowly focused. The court also ruled (6-3) that in Gratz, Michigan’s undergraduate admissions policy that automatically gave 20 out of 150 possible admission points to minority candidates was illegal (NPR).

The Grutter/Gratz decisions represent the most current interpretation of the Supreme Court with respect to the application of affirmative action policies in college admission policies. Depending on what side you are on, you can claim either victory or defeat from both these decisions. Pro affirmative action advocates can take heart in that the Grutter decision reaffirms the elements of Bakke whereby race can be used as a factor in making admissions decisions. It just cannot be the sole criteria. The anti affirmative action camp applauds the Gratz decision that strikes down the generalized, blanket use of a quota or numerical computation that is routinely applied to give preference to any race. This has left the University of Michigan to re-engineer its undergraduate admissions procedures with new personnel at the helm. The then dean of Michigan’s law school, Jeffrey Lehman is now President of Cornell (Cornell University homepage) and Lee Bollinger, the president of Michigan University at the time has since become the president of Columbia University (Columbia University homepage). Jennifer Gratz has returned to Michigan, having received her degree from the University of Michigan’s Dearborn campus and then living in California. She is currently the executive director of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative and is in the process of collecting enough names to put the proposal of ending all affirmative action policies in university admissions on the ballot there in the fall (George n.pag.).

Legacies and the economics of Affirmative Action

If we interpret the Supreme Court’s rulings over the past twenty-five years as giving colleges conditional permission to use race as an admissions criteria in an effort to achieve campus diversity, then how can a school justify giving preferences to legacy candidates who are overwhelmingly white? It is a thorny issue as schools rely heavily on the loyalty of past graduates to make financial gifts to their alma maters. This becomes a critical point in the discussion of how to finance affirmative action. To comply with the Supreme Court’s insistence that all candidates for admission undergo a thorough review requires additional effort and expense. This comes at a time when colleges and universities are already facing unprecedented demands for financial assistance from students to handle tuition costs. In his book, Back Fire – A Reporter’s Look at Affirmative Action, former ABC News Correspondent Bob Zelnick notes that, “Whereas 34% of all white students and 44.4% of all Asian Americans require some financial assistance to make it through college, the figures are 86.7% for blacks, 67.9% for Hispanics and 73.1% for Native Americans. When more of these students are admitted under affirmative action programs, costs for the university go up”(154). And research shows that black candidates are admitted at higher rates than legacies, only exacerbating the financial dilemma (Bowen and Bok 29). With the economic burdens increasing, Cornell vice president, Ron Ehrenberg believes that to maintain affirmative action activity at its current level may necessitate creating a new category of admittance he calls, “Admit/Deny,” that would indicate acceptance to the college but with the condition that no money would be available for any type of support. “That could trigger a real backlash against affirmative action,” he noted (Zelnick 155).

Race Neutral Admissions – The University of California Experience

So what would be the result of “race neutral” admissions? In 1997, the California University system was mandated (as the result of Proposition 209) to cease using any race consideration in its admission policies for the next year. At UC Berkeley, (which along with UCLA are the most competitive schools in the University of California system) in 1997 the admission rate for blacks was 48.5% and 29.9% for white. In 1998 when the policy was implemented, the African American admission rate dropped to 15.6% and 30.3% for whites (Bowen and Bok 33). However, it is worthy of note that UC Berkeley is only one of eight schools in the system and that, “In all eight campuses combined, the number of African-American admissions plunged not 57% (includes UCLA rates), but only 18%. And the tally for Hispanics was off not 40% but 7%. Many students who would have needed preferences to get into Berkeley or UCLA found places at less competitive schools like UC Riverside, where black admissions were up 34%, and Hispanic admissions 43% (Wall Street Journal n. pag.)” Interestingly, since the initial decline in 1998 noted above, as of 2002, more underrepresented minorities are attending a school in the UC system than before the passing of Proposition 209. The chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of California, John Moores attributes this to what he feels is an unfair (and possibly illegal) manipulation of the process of “comprehensive review” that has resulted in the admission of students who are ill prepared to handle the workload. The “comprehensive review” procedure minimizes the weight given to such objective criteria as a student’s SAT scores, class rank and grade point averages. Chairman Moores believes that the resultant admissions of such manipulation results in, “kids who struggled with eighth-grade math hav[ing] to compete with kids who aced advanced-placement calculus." (Wall Street Journal n. pag.)

The End of Affirmative Action?

In announcing the Grutter/Gratz decisions in 2003, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor noted that, “race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time,” and that the, “Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary” (Levy n.pag.). This implies the court’s position that current recognition of race, even in its most benign form as part of a comprehensive review process as a way to achieve diversity on campus, will be unnecessary by 2028 and by virtue of the statement, it also implies a statute of limitations to the practice. California’s passing of Proposition 209 shows that their electorate was already amenable to the elimination of race as an admissions criteria and Senator Ed Jones (one of two black senators in the Colorado legislature) has introduced a bill to eliminate racial preferences in higher education admissions in the Colorado General Assembly (Nelson n.pag.). The State of Washington eliminated the use of race in admissions at their State University in 2000 and as many as 18 states have had voter sponsored initiatives started to eliminate affirmative action policies put forward (American Council on Education n. pag.). While public opinion still favors affirmative action, a June, 2003 Gallup poll shows that support is far from overwhelming. Of the 1,385 adults surveyed, 49% favored such policies, while 43% opposed them and 8% had no opinion (PollingReport.com n.pag.).

Conclusion

The long-standing policy of affirmative action has endeavored to provide assistance to minorities in the areas of higher education as a way to make up for past discrimination and, most recently, to create a student body that is diverse. For many years, the policies permitted and even encouraged the admission of under represented minority (URM) students with lower academic credentials than white students to improve the numbers of such students enrolled. However, the Supreme Court has sharply curtailed the original scope of many of these programs that used a numerical approach to achieve the campus demographic they desired and most recently, has given an expected timetable for the elimination of such race-based programs in education. Although California’s race-neutral admissions policies may be subject to a degree of tampering, the results indicate a decrease in enrollment of minorities at the most prestigious campuses there since the policy went into effect. It remains to be seen what the results will be at other universities as they use the mandated policy of making “comprehensive reviews” of applicants that will focus on getting a more holistic picture of each candidate as opposed to using strictly objective criteria. It has been said that, “apart from abortion, affirmative action is arguably the most loaded political issue of the day, and the least rationally argued” (Bufford 29). Without an understanding of the impact of affirmative action on the college admissions process, it is likely that high school students will find it difficult to comprehend why some students gained acceptance to a school and others did not. Becoming educated to the effect of affirmative action will help students, like myself, make better decisions on where to apply to schools and understand what goes on in the minds of admissions personnel when they read our essays, look at where we live, and how we answer questions concerning race and ethnicity.

WORKS CITED

“Affirmative Action Timeline” Infoplease.com. http://infoplease.com/spot/affirmativetimeline1.html. 3/17/2004

Bowen, William G. and Bok, Derek. The Shape of the River – Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. Press, 1998

Bufford, James A. “Affirmative Action Works.” Commonwealth, 19 June 1998: 29.

“Educational Leader Jeffrey Lehman ’77 named 11^th President.” http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/03/1.16.03/Lehman.html. 3/26/2004

George, Maryanne. “After U-M decision, plaintiff rejoins battle.” Detroit Free Press, 13 Jan. 2004. http://www.freep.com/news/education/qa13_20040113.htm.3/26/2004.

Graglia, Lino A. “Is Affirmative Action on the Way Out?” Commentary, March 1998:

47.

“Lee Bollinger Named Columbia’s 19^th President.” http://www.columbia.edu/cu/alumni/Magazine/Fall2001/Bollingerpres.html. 3/26/2004.

Levy, Robert A. “Discriminate but Obfuscate.” The National Review, 27, June 2003.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-levy062703.asp. 3/24/2004.

Nelson, Christina. “Colorado Considers ending affirmative action at its universities.” Financial Times Information, Ltd. 17 Feb. 2004

“On Regents and Reality- A university's overseers try to stifle a colleague's dissent on racial preferences.” The Wall Street Journal, 28, March 2004. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004878

“Race & Ethnicity.” Pollingreport.com http://www.pollingreport.com/race.htm.3/29/2004

Skrentny, John David. The Ironies of Affrimative Action-Politics, Culture and Justice in America. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1996.

Thernstrom, Stephan A. and Thernstrom, Abigail. “The Consequences of Colorblindness.” The Wall Street Journal, 7 April 1998. http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_wsj-consequences_of_colorblin.html. 3/27/2004

“Threats to Affirmative Action” American Council on Education

http://www.acenet.edu/bookstore/descriptions/making_the_case/threats/index.cfm 3/24/2004.

Zelnick, Bob. Back Fire – A Reporter’s Look at Affirmative Action. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing Co.,1996.