Cover
I
n 1970, the University of
Michigan was also in the news
over affirmative action. Then,
students led by the Black
Action Movement handed a list of
demands to the university adminis-
tration. A main concern was increas-
ing the poorly represented minori-
ties. At the time, black undergradu-
ate enrollment was between 2-3 per-
cent.
It had been 16 years since the
Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs.
Board of Education made it illegal to
segregate schools because of race or
ethnicity.
But the university administration
refused to meet with the students.
Within days, 85 percent of the uni-
versity's students and faculty boy-
cotted classes, says attorney Alan
Kaufman, 55, of West Bloomfield, a
U-M student leader at the time.
"We held the longest and largest
student strike against racism in the
country," he says.
Other supporters included a state
senator and future mayor of Detroit,
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION from page 13
"Accepting a student based on race is reverse dis-
crimination," he says.
But the creation of this system was a result of the
U.S. Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision. Bakke, a
white applicant who was not admitted into medical
school, sued the University of California because of
16 seats set aside for minority applicants.
The Supreme Court was split 4-4 over this case,
with the ninth justice, William Powell, ruling that
quotas were illegal. No set-asides, no quotas were
allowed, Krislov says. However, Powell added that
ethnic and racial diversity within the academic com-
munity is a worthy goal and that colleges and uni-
versities can use race as one factor among many to
make admissions decisions to attain the goal.
It is in accordance with the Bakke ruling that
many colleges and universities, including U-M, fash-
ioned their affirmative action programs.
increased for African-
Coleman Young, as well as
Anierican students and
U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-
other minorities."
Detroit, and Republican Gov.
The university eventually
William Milliken.
capitulated and agreed to
One of a handful of
consider raising the goal of
African-American law stu-
minority students to 10
dents at U-M at the time,
percent.
Saul Green remembers partic-
Thirty years later, the
ipating in the strike, though
Saul
G
reen
number
of African-American
he worried about the ramifi-
undergraduate
students is
cations of such action. "My
feeling at the time was one of a strong around 8 percent. The total number of
under-represented minorities fluctuates
sense of consciousness: it was the
between 12 and 20 percent.
right thing to do. Access needed to be
they weren't offered advanced placement courses. The
grade of "A" in these courses is valued at 4.5 points.
In response to the suggestion of taking the top 10
percent of all high schools, Lempert says: "It can't
work at the U-M. It can't work for any professional
school since you don't recruit from high schools."
And even for highly selective undergraduate pro-
grams — a third of Michigan students come from
out of state, he says — "we can't give a 10 percent
plan to every high school around the nation."
Worse, he believes, that plan provides an incentive
for good Hispanic and African-American students to
stay in the ghetto to be in the top 10 percent of their
class. "It's educationally crazy," he says. "This case is
really not about affirmative action, but about integra-
tion — of our college and of our professional schools."
Lempert says education is the gateway for middle-
class careers. "It's the gateway for people to become
doctors, teachers, lawyers and for the life that so
many whites lead. In many ways, what we're fighting
for is the end of a segregated society and for an inte-
grated society with equal opportunity."
The Equalizer
Professor Lempert has a simple, almost novel per-
spective on the point system. "It's gotten a lot of
flak. But put into perspective, it's not nearly the
advantage people think it is," he says.
In fact, he believes it's more like an equalizer for
minority applicants who miss out on many of the
other points that have nothing to do with academic
achievement.
Few minorities receive legacy points, he says,
because few have family members who went to U-
M. Also, few Hispanics and African Americans live
in the geographically under-represented areas like
the Upper Peninsula.
Extra points also go to those who've attended bet-
ter schools and who took advance placement cours-
es, which are not always available to most Detroit
Public Schools students, Lempert says.
A concrete example of how this can work against
students occurred in Berkeley, Calif., he says, when
many Hispanic and African-American students with
4.0 averages didn't get into U-C Berkeley because
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2003
14
Plainti5 Perspective
Over the past few years, a little-known libertarian
organization called the Center for Individual Rights
in Washington, D.C., began challenging affirmative
action programs in two states as unconstitutional.
"We've already won two Supreme Court cases
against the legality of affirmative action programs in
Texas and in California," says Terrance Pell, presi-
dent of CIR, which has a legal staff of 10 and is rep-
resenting all the plaintiffs in the U-M case.
He says he hopes to make the two U-M cases
before the Supreme Court his next victories. "People
don't know what these schools are doing," Pell says.
"People believe these schools are interested in diver-
sity and don't appreciate the hidden racial agenda
through the use of double standards," he says.
But U-M's Lempert believes the university is up-
front. "There's nothing hidden about this at all," he
says. "Some people may not have looked, but everyone
on campus knew about it [affirmative action goals]. So
❑
the idea that there's some subterfuge is absurd. Race is
only one of many factors being considered."
Pell, a former tax attorney who also worked for
national drug czar William Bennett in the Reagan
administration, says he got into this work "because
traditional libertarian groups like the ACLU would-
n't touch cases like this — but it's a clear violation of
individual rights."
He says his practice also handles First Amendment
cases "that defend religious organizations. Our first
Supreme Court victory was for a Christian student
newspaper that couldn't receive fees because of its
religious point of view. But it's not up to the state to
exclude student organizations because they espouse a
religious point of view."
Pell's client, former Southgate resident Jennifer
Gratz, now 25, answered an ad placed by the CIR
looking for plaintiffs to challenge U-M affirmative
action policy six years ago. Turned down for U-M
undergrad school in 1995, Gratz claims a form of
reverse discrimination.
"Everyone knows this goes on, that some kids get
in because of the color of their skin," she said in the
Feb. 3 People magazine.
The other two plaintiffs are Patrick Hamacher, 23,
of Lansing who filed along with Gratz against the
undergraduate school, and Barbara Grutter, 49, of
Plymouth who applied unsuccessfully to get into the
U-M•law school.
What Price Diversity?
Benjamin McDonough, a U-M teacher who has
taught a first-year English class on affirmative
action, agrees that students are "hostile to affirma-
tive action" when they first arrive in his class.
"I try to get them past the knee-jerk response
where, whenever they hear those words, they get
angry and frustrated," he adds.
The value of diversity at the U-M law school was
recently studied; the results published by the
American Bar Foundation in the spring 2000 issue
of Law and Social Inquiry.
Lempert, one of three professors doing the study,