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Texas
Lawmakers Are Urged to Supplement 10-Percent Admissions Policy
With Affirmative Action
By
MICHAEL ARNONE
The Chronicle
of Higher Education
Friday, June 25, 2004
Texas
has seen the number of minority students attending its flagship
universities drop since a federal court ordered it to ban affirmative
action in admissions, and it should amend its policy to reflect
recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions supporting the practice, affirmative-action
advocates told state lawmakers on Thursday.
The
advocates also submitted a report,
"Blend It, Don't End It: Affirmative Action and the Texas
10-Percent Plan After Grutter and Gratz," to the State Senate's
Subcommittee on Higher Education. The report recommends changing
the law to support the controlled use of race in admissions decisions.
The
law the advocates are seeking to alter automatically admits Texas
students in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes to
any public university in the state. The plan has had the greatest
effect on the two flagship universities, Texas A&M University
at College Station and the University of Texas at Austin.
The
groups said they oppose proposals to end the top-10-percent plan.
They suggested that the universities continue to admit a percentage
of students under the plan, and consider race, among other factors,
to fill remaining slots. They recommended that the universities
develop policy statements on diversity that set goals and the
criteria to reach them. They suggested that the institutions review
their policies for "legacy" students (the offspring
of alumni), document how diversity benefits education, and describe
how the institutions discriminated in the past. Finally, they
suggested that the flagship campuses periodically seek new, race-neutral
alternatives to affirmative action.
Several
nonprofit groups collaborated on the report: the Mexican American
Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Equal Justice Society,
the Society of American Law Teachers, and Americans for a Fair
Chance, which works with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
Education Fund. Representatives from each organization spoke to
lawmakers about the report.
The
report particularly emphasizes the importance of raising minority
attendance at Texas A&M at College Station, which has seen
its minority population drop from 18.8 percent of freshman enrollments
in 1995 to 12.6 percent of freshman enrollments in 2003.
A federal
appeals court ruled in 1996 that race could not be used in college
admissions in Texas (The Chronicle, March 29, 1996), but the U.S.
Supreme Court largely reversed that finding, within certain limits,
in two cases last year (The Chronicle, July 4, 2003). After those
rulings, in cases known as Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger,
the University of Texas at Austin announced that it would resume
considering race as a factor in admissions. But Texas A&M
said it would not.
"We
conclude that Texas A&M was seriously mistaken when it recently
concluded that it can significantly improve diversity without
affirmative action, and we urge the institution to revisit this
decision," the groups said in a statement.
The
University of Texas at Austin has fared better under the top-10-percent
plan, with the proportion of minority students rising from 17.5
percent in 1995 to 20.6 percent in 2003. It still faces a capacity
crisis, however, with students under the percent plan taking up
nearly 70 percent of its freshman class.
Marta
Tienda, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton
University who completed a study of the percent plan last year,
was among the advocates who spoke to lawmakers on Thursday. Based
on the findings of the Princeton study, Ms. Tienda recommended
that the flagships admit 50 percent of their students through
the percent plan and focus on high schools that traditionally
have sent few students to them.
Copyright
© 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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