3 - The Minhionn nails - TIIaCriov Nina 7d Onnl
- ivuuan fvary -I ueUay, JuneZ',UlTHE DECISION s FALLOUT
Changes on the way for schools across nation
Legal hurdles remain
for affirmative action
By Jordan Schrader
Daily News Editor
The U.S. Supreme Court handed the
University only a partial victory yes-
terday, but many other colleges had
more to celebrate.
A university's ability to consider the
race of an applicant, until yesterday,
had depended on its geographic loca-
tion. Lower court decisions had
banned affirmative action in Texas,
Georgia Louisiana, Florida, Alabama
and Mississippi.
University of Texas law Prof. Dou-
glas Laycock said all that has now
changed - at least for Texas, unable
to consider race since the U.S. 5th Cir-
cuit Court of Appeals' 2000 decision
in the Texas v. Hopwood case.
"Hopwood is gone," Laycock said.
"This is a huge win that completely
supplants Hopwood"
Texas now can return to a race-con-
scious system, likely using the Univer-
sity of Michigan's Law School system
as a model, he said.
Laycock said that means a clear-cut
victory for affirmative action support-
ers across the country, despite the
nuances and divisions of the Supreme
Court's ruling and its rejection of the
LSA admissions policy.
"As long as there's one way race can
be considered, it doesn't matter how
many other ways there are," he said.
At the University of Georgia, Vice
President of Instruction Del Dunn had
a more cautious reaction.
"We're going to have to have our
attorneys take a look at it," he said.
"There's some ambiguities."
He estimated a full legal analysis
could take a year - and in the mean
time, Georgia admissions will contin-
ue to be race-blind.
Applicants for the class of Fall 2004
will have to get in on the merits of
their grade point averages, high-
school curiculums and standardized
test scores, just as they have for the
two years since the 1lth Circuit Court
of Appeals said using race was uncon-
stitutional.
Georgia's student body is 5 to 6 per-
cent black despite its home state's
black population of 28 to 29 percent,
Dunn said. That's not a result of affir-
mative action's disappearance though:
minority numbers have actually risen
since the school went race-blind,
thanks in part to more aggressive
minority recruitment.
Billy Joyner, Georgia's Young
Democrats president, said the univer-
sity may need a push from his group
and other supporters of affirmative
action before it re-instates the policies.
"It's a fairly conservative school,"
he said, noting the university did not
appeal the 11th Circuit's decision or
file a brief in the Supreme Court on
behalf of the University of Michigan.
"I'm not sure how eager they'll be.
We will certainly be putting pressure
on them."
At Texas, where administrators may
be more eager to bring back race-con-
scious admissions, it is conservatives
who are now on the defensive.
With the court's decision, Young
Conservatives of Texas chapter Presi-
dent Austin Kinghorn said, "We're
suspending the 14th Amendment.
We're suspending equal protection."
Without knowing how the admin-
istration will decide to proceed,
Kinghorn wasn't sure how his group
will respond and predicted a return
to racial preferences. "It may be a
losing battle, at least for today, but
we're going to keep fighting the
war," he said.
Wary administrators and conserva-
tive students aren't the only hurdles
for schools looking to return to their
old policies. In many states, govern-
ment has gotten involved.
Unable to consider race, states such
as Texas and Florida created "percent
plans," guaranteeing admission to a
state college for the top tier of stu-
dents at every high school. President
Bush touted the plans as a race-blind
alternative to the University's system.
Laycock said the Ten Percent
Plan in Texas likely enjoys enough
political support to continue even
though schools can once again use
race. "I don't think it's going to go
AP PHOTO
Nikki Starr, left, a first year University of Texas student government representative and Brian Haley, UT student body president, speak on
the steps of the UT main building regarding the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action Monday.
away," he said.
Seventy percent of Texas's students
in Austin are admitted under the plan,
Laycock said.
That leaves few spots for the stu-
dents whose unique talents should be
considered separately from their class
rank, especially those in the schools of
art, dance and architecture, Texas stu-
dent Brian Haley said.
Haley, president of the Texas stu-
dent body, said this flaw in the per-
cent plan makes the court's ruling
welcome.
"It's almost like we're admitting
students under one criteria" under the
percent plan, he said.
Even if the legislature and governor
prove unwilling to eliminate the law,
changes still may be in store. For
example, some Republicans in the
state want to cap the number of stu-
dents that can get in to a school purely
based on their class rank.
Democratic state Sen. Royce West,
chair of the Senate's higher education
subcommittee, wants the Texas legis-
lature to take a new look at the plan.
He said he would depend on college
administrators' advice on what the
law's future should be now that race-
conscious admissions are legal.
"It's premature to do away with the
program," he said. "We can put it on
the table and figure out whether there
should be a combination of the two,"
he said, referring to affirmative action
and the percent plan.
In California and Washington,
affirmative action supporters face a
formidable roadblock - voter initia-
tives that have successfully banned
race-conscious college admissions.
The court's decision thus has no
immediate effect in those states.
But University of California at
Berkeley student Ronald Cruz said the
court's decision could make it more
likely that Proposition 209, Califor-
nia's 1996 voter initiative, will be
reversed. His group, the Coalition to
Defend Affirmative Action and Inte-
gration and Fight for Equality By Any
Means Necessary, is considering new
legal action in the state, he said.
Perhaps the most important result of
the court's decision for his state, he
said, is that the biggest victory has
now been won.
"We've already wrested a pro
affirmative action ruling from.a
very conservative court, so we're
confident we can win in Califon-
nia," he said.
Decision's impact
could extend to
younger students
Private, public schools
analyze admissions to
match court's dictates
By Andrew Kaplan
Daily Staff Reporter
By Victoria Edwards
Daily News Editor
The two U.S. Supreme Court decisions
released yesterday may stand to greatly
affect the integration policies in the 15,000
K-12 school districts in the nation.
One school system - Lynn School Dis-
trict in Lynn, Mass. - had a voluntary
desegregation plan that was challenged and
upheld in federal court on June 7. Before
yesterday's decision, however, Citizens for
Preservation of Constitutional Rights -
the plaintiff in the first case - had chal-
lenged and was planning to appeal the
lower court's decision in the U.S. 1st Cir-
cuit Court of Appeals.
"We have to study the decision more
but at first glance it would appear the
Supreme Court is throwing the 14th
Amendment to the side," CPCR Presi-
dent Chester Powell said.
He added it is now unsure whether or
not they will be able to successfully
appeal the decision.
"(We) have to consult with staff attorneys
and study the decision to decide if we're
appealing. The net result is (that) ... racial
discrimination is the essence of the deci-
'sion," Powell said.
Lynn is a city outside of Boston that
enacted a voluntary student transfer policy
in the '80s.
"They did it for a variety of reasons. They
realized their neighborhoods were being
increasingly segregated," said Chinh Quang
Le, assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund. He added the program they
enacted allowed students to attend neighbor-
hood schools and transfer if in doing so the
transfer would decrease the segregation in
the sending school and increase the diversi-
ty in the receiving school.
Le said that today, out of the 187,000 stu-
dents in Lynn, one-third take advantage of
this plan. "It is more integrated now, and the
plan is minimally intrusive they can always
go to their neighborhood school," he said.
"I think lawyers will
argue since (diversity)
is a compelling.
interest in higher
education it is also a
compelling interest in
K- 12"9
- Lisa Soronen
National School Board Association
are exposed) at age five than 18. It's hard to
teach an old dog new tricks," Soronen said.
Soronen said an important impact of the
court's decisions is that they only allow cer-
tain narrowly tailored plans. The court
upheld the Law School's policy and rejected
that of the College of Literature, Science
and the Arts. This allows schools to take
these two plans and compare them so they
know what must go into a plan that would
constitute a compelling state interest.
Schools now have a good idea how to do it
lawfully; there is certain clarity under the
law, she added.
"The Law School can provide a good
road map. This plan is good. When schools
can mimic there is less ambiguity. This will
encourage (schools) to take on voluntary
affirmative action plans because it is more
likely they can make (it) compliant with the
law," Soronen said.
Gary Kreep, executive director of the
U.S. Justice Foundation, a non-profit organ-
ization that defends underpriveleged stu-
dents - said he is in a unique position.
Although most of the clientele he has
defended claim the title of minority, he
remains firmly against affirmative action.
"It's the kids that get screwed. I'm a
grandfather and when I see kids get screwed
because of race it makes me very mad.
Though we're a conservative law firm our
clients are minorities because they're the
ones getting screwed by the school system,"
E TH LUWER/Uaily
Students Supporting Affirmative
Action gather on the Diag to
celebrate the Supreme Court's
decision in the University's cases.
stance is shared by Rochford resident Sue
Gordon, who said, "I'm glad the Supreme
Court turned (the LSA admissions policy)
down, because our child is penalized. It is
just as prejudiced for the sake of not going
the other way. It is prejudiced in itself, (peo-
ple) should be admitted based on merit not
based on who or what they are."
But the controversial nature of this case
goes beyond courtrooms to family disagree-
ments, said her son, Ben Terhaar, a senior at
a mostly white Rockford high school. He
said he agrees with the minority benefits
that affirmative action allows, "they proba-
bly had less opportunity in high school so
they wouldn't have as much merit as I
would because of this lack of opportunity."
Detroit Cass Technical High School
sophomore Ebony Ross said she would
like to see her school diversify. "Our
school is mostly black, whereas West
Bloomfield is mostly Caucasian. We
should be exposed to each other ... we
have to come as one," she said.
Michigan is not as diverse as other
places around the world, said Chris Caf-
fee, a senior at Yokota High, located on a
military base in Japan.
"I don't really notice diversity or any-
thing. It's not anything I really think
about. In the military we move around
always and there are different kinds of
people," Chris said.
CLEVELAND - In deciding the University's
cases, the U.S. Supreme Court specifically
addressed the admissions policies of the Univer-
sity and other state institutes of higher education.
But in addition to taking on public universities,
the court's landmark ruling has also forced pri-
vate institutions to look introspectively at the use
of race in their own admissions processes.
Immediately following the court's decision,
which ipheld the Law School's consideration of
race in-admissions but struck down the College
of Literature, Science and the Arts' system of giv-
ing 20 points to underrepresented minority appli-
cants, other colleges and universities such as the
University of Texas and Harvard University each
prepared statements regarding how the ruling
would affect their admissions.
Texas, a state university with a student body
numbering 49,000, has been spotlighted along
with the University of Michigan in lawsuits ques-
tioning the use of race in admissions. Harvard, a
privately endowed university, has faced no such
adversity and prides itself on what Supreme
Court Justice Lewis Powell once deemed a
"model" admissions system. To be sure, Harvard
has approached the topic of race much like the
Michigan Law School has - an applicant's race
is a factor in admissions, but no race-conscious
point system preordains admission.
"The central aspect of our system is that it con-
siders each individual as an individual - as an
individual contributing to a class," said Harvard
President Larry Summers. "We compose a class
by weighing individuals ... without a formula or
mechanistic approach. But we recognize that
background matters for what an individual can
learn here and contribute here."
The court rulings, Summers said, will not
change Harvard's admissions policies, nor the
policies of the other elite private colleges and uni-
versities that jointly filed a brief in favor of
Michigan's in February.
"This decision reaffirms the kinds of
approaches that are at use at Harvard," he said.
"The institutions that signed Harvard's brief, I
believe will all have their admission decisions
reaffirmed."
aspects on a student's file."
University of Texas President Larry Faulker
said his school's admissions policies will undergo
a significant change by the next full admissions
cycle, since the Court's decision has also over-
turned the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in
Hopwood v. Texas, which began a ban on race=
conscious admissions in Texas since 1996. The
Supreme Court decision, he said, will allow Texas
to couple its "Ten Percent Plan" with new admis-
sions policies that will consider race, among
other factors, in an applicant's status.
"We are very pleased at the University of Texas
at Austin that the court's ruling sweeps away the
Hopwood decision and places the state of Texas
on the same basis as educational institutions else-
where in the United States," Faulkner said in a
teleconference yesterday. "This decision makes it
easier for us to approach that goal (of racial
diversity), a goal has not changed since the year
we were under Hopwood."
In addition to the Texas schools, most state=
funded, southern historically black colleges and
universities have been negotiating lawsuits over
their use of race in scholarships, which are keys
to admission.
"In Mississippi, the Ayers case goes back to
1975," said Roy Hudson, spokesman for Missis-
sippi Valley State University, referring to the
string of race cases culminating in the 5th Circuit
Court's decision to mandate the desegregation of
all publicly funded southern HBCUs. "Under that
court ruling, our university has been giving
'Diversity Scholarships' or race scholarships .
to increase our white student population" 10 per-
cent, in exchange for funding.
The scholarships, given to non-black candi-
dates and infamously dubbed "white-only"
grants, are now being challenged in the Supreme
Court in Tompkins v. University ofAlabama -in
which a decision could carry echoes of the court-s
ruling yesterday.
But despite the court's decision on the Univer-
sity's admissions policies, leaders of southern
HBCUs said they are determined to sustain their
integration policies.
"We would hope that (the recent Supreme
Court ruling) helps to give us some direction
that we can proceed with our diversity scholar-
ship program," Hudson said. "We want to be ,a