josh478 wrote:
Off topic a bit, but if they are considering ethnicity in the admissions, could't that be considered a violation of EO? At least in PhD programs, some apps don't even show your age to help curb the possibility of age descrimination being a deciding factor... but maybe all schools are different on this.
Pelihu is a lawyer I gather and might be qualified to answer ...
thanks!
Well, the Bakke decision from the Supreme Court still controls. Basically, they the Court in that case was split, and what some would argue was the least persuasive argument in the case prevailed, because the other 8 members canceled each other out. To summarize, the Court ruled that people could not be admitted or denied based on race, however race could be one factor in the admissions process.
There are two more recent cases on the subject that made it to the Supreme Court, one involving the Michigan Law School, and one involving the Michigan Undergrad (I was at Michigan Law School when these cases were launched). The cases were separate, but were considered together by the Court. The Court did not make new law in these cases, the simply interpreted the admissions policies based on the Bakke decision.
They deemed the admissions process for Michigan Undergrad to be a violation of the earlier ruling. Michigan used race as one of many factors in admissions, (Michigan used a point system), but the points assigned to underrepresented minorities was greater than the weight given to GPAs & SATs and everything else put together. The Court ruled that this policy was not narrowly construed under their Bakke ruling. Michigan was forced to revamp their policy - I do not know how it currently stands.
The admissions policy for Michigan Law School was challenged at the same time, and their process was upheld even though there was literally no crossover between the scores of admitted student populations of Whites and Asians (few Indians apply to law school) and the scores of underrepresented minorities. In other words, the lowest GPA/GMAT combo for White/Asian that year (I'm just recalling off the to of my head) was something like 3.2/163 or something. There were no minorities applicants that exceeded this lowest score. The Supreme Court ruled that the law school policy was narrowly construed and was the only way to meet a constitutionally acceptable goal.
That's a very very brief summary of a subject that just begs for hours of discussion.
There was also another decision that affected the UC school system (strangely, I was at UCLA when this policy went into effect). The details are really vague, but if I recall, this was an action taken by the UC Regents and was not a court mandated change, but the UC system disallowed the use of race entirely. The very next year, schools with traditionally very high minority representations (most schools in California do) went to less than 5% minority. At the same time, the Asian populations jumped to over 50%. The most drastic changes (not surprisingly) were at UCLA and Berkeley, where for years (probably decades) Asians were severely punished for their ethnicity.
In any case, it's no fun being on the wrong end (as I was for college and law school), but I believe most schools policies are constitutionally valid.
close
27 Nov 2006, 13:18
