From wire reports, the White House (Bush) is going to file a brief against
the U of M and the case before the Supreme Court over UM's affirmative
action plan.  What do you think of this and which side are you on?


"WH intervention expected on affirmative action case
University admissions program under scrutiny
From John King and Dana Bash
CNN Washington Bureau
Wednesday, January 15, 2003 Posted: 1:38 PM EST (1838 GMT)


   
The Bush administration is preparing to oppose affirmative action plan in
Supreme Court case.  
 
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House is expected to file a brief by
Thursday with the U.S. Supreme Court opposing a University of Michigan
affirmative action program, according to administration officials. 

Such a move would immerse the administration in a politically and socially
charged subject at a time when Republicans are trying to recover from a
racially tinged firestorm in the Senate and reach out to minority voters. 

Details of the brief are still being finalized, the officials said, but
the White House is expected to argue that there are better ways to promote
diversity than the program that gives preference to African-Americans and
Hispanics applying to the university. 

The expected move was being closely watched on Capitol Hill by Democrats
who say Republicans have failed to encourage racial diversity. 

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, while declining to discuss Bush's
plans, said the president met with his advisers last night on the matter. 

"Diversity is an important goal," said Fleischer. 

"The challenge is to focus on encouraging diversity without using quotas,"
Fleischer said, adding that the president has "longstanding" opposition to
quotas. 

White students opposed to the program filed suit against the University of
Michigan, and the Supreme Court's decision on the case will be key in
defining the role of affirmative action in America. 

Bush is still deciding what kind of statement to make in the brief, but
could argue that while diversity in higher education is important, the
University of Michigan's program is not constitutional. It is unclear,
however, whether the administration would argue that race could not be
considered at all as a factor. 

Conservatives have been arguing that it is important for the
administration to take a stand against racial preferences. 

A senior administration official says Solicitor General Ted Olson sent an
e-mail to the White House arguing for a strong brief opposing the Michigan
program and racial preferences in general. 

But it is a politically sensitive issue for the president and Republicans
who have been trying to reach out to minorities, especially in the wake of
the controversy surrounding Sen. Trent Lott's comments praising Sen. Strom
Thurmond's segregationist 1948 presidential bid. 

Many civil rights activists have also been angered by the president's
judicial nominees, most recently that of Charles Pickering, a Mississippi
judge renominated to a federal appeals court. They've described Pickering
as racially insensitive and questioned his commitment to civil rights. 

When he was governor of Texas, Bush opposed racial preferences at state
universities, opting instead for a program he calls "affirmative access,"
making the top 10 percent of all high school students eligible for
admissions. 

Fleischer described the case as "particularly important" for "all
Americans." 

"It could potentially lead to a definition across the nation about what
standards are allowable in terms of society dealing with questions about
admissions and race," Fleischer said. 

The White House does not have to file a friend of the court brief, but in
cases as high profile as this, it is common practice. 

The brief is due at the Supreme Court by Thursday. 

Senate Minority Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, told reporters Wednesday that
how the administration weighs in will be "a watershed moment" for
Republicans on the question of diversity. 

"I think the burden of proof will be on the administration, I think the
burden of proof will be on Republicans to show us how they can be for
diversity and yet be against the laws that promulgate diversity," Daschle
said. "That, I think, is a hard case to make, but I look forward to their
response." 

232 responses total.

The CNN site also lists the point system listed under "other factors" used
by the University of Michigan admissions dept.

Geography  10 points Mich. resident
            6 points if live in underrepresented Michigan county
            2 points if live in underrepresented State

Alumni    4 points if Legacy (parents or steparents are alumni)
          1 point if grandparents or other relatives are alumni

Essay     1 point if outstanding essay (raised to 3 points in 1999)

Personal Achievement  1 point State, 3 points Regional, 5 points national

Miscellaneous  20 points if have socio-economic disadvantage
               20 points if under represented racial-ethnic minority
               identification

Men in Nursing-- 5 points

Scholarship Athlete-- 20 points

Provost's discretion-- 20 points


I'm sure there may be some of you in Michigan who couldn't get into U of M
and may have blamed this points system.  Is it fair?  Do the arguments the
students who are suing the U of M are making have any validity?  

How many total points are there? 

I think if they're going to be forced to eliminate affirmative action
they should have to eliminate preferences for athletes, too.

I think it's particularly ironic for someone who presumably got into
Yale partly on a legacy preference to speak out against affirmative action.

If I am not mistaken, Yale is a private school and the University of 
Michigan is tax supported.

This issue can be summarized by the question: Is it okay 
to discriminate against someone, based on his or her race,
if it's done for good reasons that help society as a whole?

In this particular case I think the answer is no, not at this point. 
Fifty years ago, yes.  Look at states that don't allow this type of
discrimination, like California.  Are their colleges a boring sea of
white?  The benefits of this policy have gone far enough and continued
discrimination is starting to do more harm than good with the message it
sends about racial status. 

I believe the Supreme Court will find against the UofM.

Re #4: But the point is, he still benefited from a policy that discriminates
based on a factor that has nothing to do with academic achievement.  That
makes it hypocritical of him to denounce affirmative action.

If people want TRUE equality when applying to schools, the school should
consider the following:

GPA
Test scores
Essay, if applicable

That's it.  No gender, race, income, etc.  All they have to do is get a team
of people to replace the applicant's name with a number, track it that way,
and then inform the top whatever percent that they've earned enrollment at
the university.

I'd rather know that my doctor earned his way into med school because he got
A's, not because of quotas.  (regardless of what race he is)

To avoid flames:  "he" is used in the gender-neutral sense that I'm used to,
and I was not implying that doctors who are of a minority race got there
because of their race.

I hope the Supreme Court overturns Affirmative Action.  I don't see how we've
achieved equal rights if someone is denied a place in school because the
allotted seats for Caucasians have been filled.  It has served its purpose,
as Mary said.

Why should academic achievement be the only criterion for admission to a
public university? The nation needs a lot of educated and(or) trained
people to serve its needs, but academic achievement is not the only
measure of how and how well, or if, they can serve. 

For example, minority communities need doctors and lawyers and other
professionals. Therefore educational institutions need to educate people
desiring to work in such communities. That is very likely to be minorities
themselves. How else do you help ensure that all communities can obtain
the professional services they need? This means that minorities should be
attracted into those professions, which implies in some sense encouraging
or supporting their enrollment. There are scholarships for minorities
(which no one seems to be objecting to), but first students need to be
admitted to use such scholarships. 

Discrimination because of race has not yet disappeared from our society.
While it is still present, I believe there should be compensating efforts
made to assist those discriminated against. 

#6 of 8 by David Brodbeck (gull) on Wed Jan 15 16:51:25 2003: Re #4: But 
the point is, he still benefited from a policy that discriminates based 
on a factor that has nothing to do with academic achievement.  That 
makes it hypocritical of him to denounce affirmative action."

Actually, it isn't the point.  The point is that there is a difference 
between what a private person/organization can do and what a public 
organization can do.  If Yale wants to tarnish the value of it's degree 
by admitting lesser qualified individuals, that is its prerogative 
without question.


re:  "#8 (rcurl):  Discrimination because of race has not yet 
disappeared from our society."

And as long a government continues to operate discriminatory programs, 
it probably never will.

re #7:

> I'd rather know that my doctor earned his way into med school because he got
> A's, not because of quotas.  (regardless of what race he is)

Of course you would.  And if affirmative action preferences were weighted so
heavily in admissions that a person with a B or C average could get admitted
at the expense of a candidate with solid As, you might have a point.  As used
by most admissions programs, however, the usefulness of the affirmative-action
bonus is largely limited to discriminating between two students with "A"
averages, or at most between an "A-" student and an "A" student.  Unfortunately
for your argument, medical school admissions are so competitive that a good
school can easily fill every available slot with an "A" student, affirmative
action or no, if that's what the school wants to look for in its candidates..

It never occurred to me to ask the doctors that have treated me for their
undergraduate transcripts prior to permitting them to touch me. How  are
doctors evaluated today? Not by their GPA, but by their performance. I
think too many people are making the GPA sacred *for their purposes*, when
in other circumstances they might argue that a GPA doesn't prove anything.

How about choosing presidents by the GPAs? Do you think that would be a
good idea?

Someone up there asked how many "points" were required for admission.  
There's a possible maximum of 150; 100 generally guarantees admission, 
90-99 gets one on the waitlist, and a sub90 gets a rejection.  The 
points are outlined at 
http://www.umich.edu/~mrev/archives/1999/summer/chart.htm

So, if I understand the system, the plaintiffs must have scored in the 
sub-100 range, which would seem to mean that there's no guarantee that 
they would have been admitted regardless of their race or that of 
others. 

I don't really *like* affirmative action.  But as a temporary measure I
think it's still necessary.  The precipitous drop in minority admissions
to public universities in states that *have* outlawed it demonstrates that.

I'm working on a substitute for affirmative action. This would involve
an evaluation of the damage done to individual's lives by discrimination
and then a committment to provide those classes of individuals with
benefits equivalent to the losses from discrimination. In this way,
those opposed to this kind of affirmative action could eliminate it
by eliminating discrimination. 

I'm still working on the details, but that's the general idea.

re:  "#13 (gull): I don't really *like* affirmative action.  But as a 
temporary measure I think it's still necessary.  The precipitous drop in 
minority admissions to public universities in states that *have* 
outlawed it demonstrates that."

Just how many years/decades is "temporary" and you'll have to provide 
some figures to back up that "precipitous drop" you've identified.  And 
while you're getting those statistics, how about including data on the 
"precipitous drop" in the # of minorities graduating (which is 
probably a lot more relevant)??

Flat rate for everyone.  no legacy, no other options.  You either pass the
requirements, or you go to another college.

Doesn't Texas use a race-neutral formula for admissions, based on 
geographic location?  Something like guaranteeing everyone in the top 
10% of their class admission to some state university.  I don't 
remember the details well, but that story came out right around the 
time the lawsuits against Michigan came up.  As I recall, the racial 
composition for college admissions in Texas didn't change much at all 
when this system was implemented, but they did get rid of the quota 
system.

We've had almost 40 years of affirmative action in America.  I think 
it's done some good, for some people, and I think it's done some harm 
to others.  It hasn't solved the problems of racism in America.  It 
never will.  It shifts the problems a little, but that's all it does.  
Affirmative action is an accepted version of racism, no less odious 
than what it replaces.  If we'd spent 40 years becoming colorblind 
instead of instituting special exceptions based on skin tone, it seems 
to me we'd be better off now with regard to resolving the racial issues 
in America.

I'd like very much to see an end to racial quotas at the University of 
Michigan.

I like the idea of the "top 10%" plan. It meets my criteriion of offering
college education to all demographics, equally. It is, of course a form of
"quota system" (10%) and like affirmative action also gives admission to
some students much less qualified than others. However this is all hidden
from view in a cloak of seeming fairness. It is the magic of what you can
do with numbers.

wzy back there...    150   points is the max for um admission.
  
thre is an inherent racism in um's 12 points for PERFECT sat/act scores
but 20 points for skin color. NO effort is involved in your receiving
a skin color different from white. LOTS of effort is inbolved in 
quaify9ing for a sports/merit scholarship, worth many um points.
  
achievement is the key - individual effort toward a goal - affirmative
action depends on the affirmative qualitites of the applicant. 
  
btw, if the university president decides to allow enrollment of 'special
cases' (whatEVER) they amy be - fine. be public about it.
  
the um's (and tons of other university presidents) ALLOW/PROMOTE enrollment
of tose BELOW the standards. fine. include minority students in that
'class'. at least some person would be responsible for the quantity
of non-conforming admissions.

In one way, the top 10% plan is deceptive.  In Texas (again, if I'm 
recalling correctly) it didn't really change anything for anyone, at 
least not demographically.  It's a change in appearances with no 
substantial change being made.  What's the point?

The point is to get out of specifying racial quotas, codifying racism 
right into the university's admission standards.  It seems to me to be 
a worthwhile distinction to make.

I don't think it's without problems.  Not all high schools are equal.  
Is it going to discourage parents of minority children from moving to 
better neighborhoods with better, but more competitive, school 
districts?  Maybe some good white students will be going to inner city 
schools to take advantage of lesser competition.  It might accomplish 
what bussing tried to do in the 70s, but in a voluntary way.

Are there going to be parent groups fighting against improving their 
schools, because of the fear of the status quo shifting and dropping 
their kid out of the top 10% in his class?

re resp:19: I had to respond to that comment separately.

The U-M is pretty proactive about bringing in non-traditional students, 
students from troubled backgrounds, and those with unusual 
circumstances.  I guess that's the purpose of the provost's 20 
discretionary points.

Re: 8 "For example, minority communities need doctors and lawyers and other
 professionals. Therefore educational institutions need to educate people
 desiring to work in such communities. That is very likely to be minorities
 themselves. How else do you help ensure that all communities can obtain
 the professional services they need?"

"If there were no affirmative action, there would be no minority doctors
and lawyers!"  Much like the tired old saw, "If there were no public schools,
all our children would be illiterate!"

You seem to be claiming that just because someone isn't qualified to
get into an first-tier college -- one that they would otherwise be admitted
to on the basis of their skin color -- won't be able to get into any other
college either.

What has been happening in an environment of affirmative action is that the
elite colleges pirate the middle-of-the-road minority students who would
otherwise have a far more successful educational experience at second-tier
colleges, creating a cascade effect of unqualified students at overdemanding
colleges at all levels.

I would have to agree with Shelby Steele, who wrote in a Wall Street Journal
article last year, "America not only made racial disparities profitable but
also generated a vast civil-rights grievance industry that has been far more
obsessed with finding disparities than with helping people overcome
deprivation".

Consider the experience of California, as related in this Dartmouth Review
article: http://www.dartreview.com/archives/000404.php

   Contrary to dire predictions about blacks and Hispanics being denied a
   college education and locked out of opportunity -- Jesse Jackson even
   referred to "ethnic cleansing" -- the end of racial preferences has not
   appreciably affected the enrollment of such minorities. What it has done
   is effect a redistribution of black and Hispanic applicants among the
   universities of the California system. The effect is to place students
   at the university for which their record qualifies them academically.

Right on point to #8.  Further,

   In the days before the end of racial preferences the drop-out rate of
   black students in the California system was 42 percent, twice the rate
   of whites. 

What good is it to get into an elite college if you aren't prepared to
succeed there?

So that the elite college has a fair representation of all communities
for the purpose of diversity in backgrounds, attitudes, and perspectives,
which are essential for a well-rounded education. 

In addition, there is NO measure that a-prior ensures success or failure
in higher education. There are statistical relations between groups from
different backgrounds, but one cannot say with assurance what will happen
with particular individuals. A rigid admissiion based just on prior
academic achievement is ensured to omit some students that will actually
succeed better than some of those admitted on such a narrow basis. 

jep & michaela - The U of M does not have quotas, as you must understand
if you've looked at the point chart.  It gives an advantage in the
admissions process to minorities, but it does not specify a certain number
of spots to be filled by them.  (That's what a quota is.) 

BTW, for those who don't know, this has been a huge issue on campus, since
before I started back to school 4 years ago.  The topic has dominated the
student goverment election debates (I know, who cares), and there have been
uncounted marches and demonstrations on the Diag.

I think you can argue that the University has an obligation to address the
needs of our society as a whole, as well as the needs and desires of each
individual student or prospective student.  (It is, after all, a part of
the government, part of whose job is to "promote the general welfare".) 
In that case, Rane's argument about helping to train doctors who will be
likely to work where they are needed is a very good one. 

klg shows his lack of understanding of mathematics and statistics when
he/she tries to make that statement into "there will be no qualified
minority doctors and lawyers if we don't have affirmative action" (not an
exact quote).  klg points out that that's stupid - well duh.  But that's
not the point.  The question is, should the government, through the U of
M, be trying to increase the number of college-educated minorities (from
some non-zero starting point), and in the process sacrifice absolute
fairness to individuals? 

I have always been on the fence about this issue, myself.  Because while I
do believe that the State has an obligation and an interest in promoting
the general welfare, and that absolute fairness is not the only measure of
how well it's doing its job, the next question is, "does affirmative
really accomplish that?"  Because its sideaffect is to promote a sense of
entitlement, which may *not* be in the public welfare.

This response has been erased.

Sure - when society is too. 

An easy way to pick apart claims of unfairness is to ask those who claim their
group isn't being treated fairly to consider whether they'd want to switch
sides with the person they think is getting better treatment.  So, would those
of you white people who think your race has kept you from getting into the
Unviersity of Michigan, would you prefer to have grown up as a black person
in Michigan?  Would those of you who've attended the 16% black Ann Arbor
schools prefer to have attended school in Detroit, where I don't have figures
for the school system, but the city is 82% black?  What about those who are
presumably this case's primary constituency, the "Reagan Democrats" of 2.7%
black Macomb County (right across 8 Mile Road from 82% black Detroit)?  Are
they clamoring to switch places black Detroiters?  Probably not, because
Michigan is still a very segregated state, and it's very clear that conditions
are nowhere near equal between the state's two main races.

I fully agree, the current ways of dealing with race in the US are lousy, and
everybody should be treated differently.  Unfortunately, that isn't happening,
and Affirmative Action is an attempt to compensate, not the cause itself. 
What we have now is equivalent to a race (in the other meaning of the word)
where one group of people starts behind the main pack, get tripped up
frequently along the way, and then gets given some extra points at the finish
line to make up for some of the time they lost.  A few people in that group
may be such good runners that they manage to catch up to and pass the main
pack, and don't need the bonus points.  Some people in the main pack may be
sufficiently bad runners that they end up behind those who started behind
them.  Still, nobody's being helped so much by the bonus points that they're
better off than if they'd started in the main pack.

I hope we can all agree that a race run like that would be a farce.  However,
what would even things would would be to eliminate the different treatments
of the groups at the beginning.  Eliminating the bonus points at the end
without changing the discrimination at the beginning would do nothing useful.
The same goes for racial discrimination.  It should be gotten rid of, from
the start, and everybody should be treated equally.  But leaving things as
they are, with all the rampant discrimination that goes on, while getting rid
of the Affirmative Action that attempts to compensate for it, isn't going to
help anything.

This response has been erased.

re:  "#24 (aruba): klg shows his lack of understanding of mathematics 
and statistics when he/she tries to make that statement into "there will 
be no qualified minority doctors and lawyers if we don't have 
affirmative action" (not an exact quote). "

I don't know if it's an exact quote or not, since I didn't say it.

But thanks for the kind words, anyway.

Re #15: FWIW, even with the current program the student body at UofM
hovers around 8% black.  13% of the population is black.  Doesn't sound
like it's causing a disproportionate number of minorities to be admitted.


I kind of like the perspective this article puts on the problem:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/01/16/bush/index.html

"Now there is no movement among conservatives to require that legacy
applicants (or athletes) display the same level of merit as anyone else
admitted to an elite school. To the right diversity isn't an important
value -- but traditions of family privilege must be preserved."

Does that % apply to the total student body - or just undergrad?  If it 
is the total student body, then you need to consider the pool from which 
grad students can be drawn, which is probably < 13% "black."

Also, considering the high dropout rate among affirmative action 
admittants, it might be interesting to know the makeup of the freshman 
class before the attrition began.

This article: http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/0001/Dec04_00/2.htm contains
statistics from the class which entered in fall 2000 - 8.7 percent (472 out
of 5418) were African American.

re #20 ... actually, n an interview i heard today, the texas 10% criterion
DID make a significant difference - not in the first year - but as the
system progresssed the admissions balalnced the culture.
  
as for graduations ... well, that's different entirelky. and a toic
topic for another itme.

btw, teh interview was with the university of texas admissions guy, not
some pundit.

I read in the AA News yesterday that one of the U. Texas campuses 
(Austin?) dropped it's affirmative action admissions, and had a 25% 
drop in black admissions.  They then adopted the top 10% rule and their 
racial balance has been moving back to what it used to be, but isn't 
quite there yet.  I don't remember the numbers on how close it has 
gotten to what it was before.

According to the 10/19/01 University Record, "African American" first 
year enrollment as of Fall 2001 was up to 499, or 9%.  I didn't notice 
any info on graduation rates, however.

I did observe, though, that males are under-represented.  Oh, the 
unfairness of it all.

I also observed that the total number for total university enrollment 
was some 1,050 greater than the sum of the breakdown by 
race/origin.  ??????

Enrollees who did not supply ethnic information?

err, ethnicity...

If your goal is to have something that looks diverse, and your high schools
are all fully segregated, the 10% rule would work reasonaly well.  I still
think it's a pretty poor Affirmative Action substitute.

The Ann Arbor Public Schools, through the analysis of racial data in the
drawing of school district boundaries and the dreaded quotas (yes, really
quotas, not bonus points) in determining admissions to the alternative
schools, manage to be pretty diverse at the per building level.  However, when
I was a student there (graduating seven years ago), there still wasn't mixing
between black and white students.  With a few exceptions, people of different
races didn't tend to socialize together or eat lunch together, or anything
like that.  There was also a big racial achievement gap.  So despite the
buildings being integrated, there was still clearly a lot of segregation, and
something seemed to be creating a big disadvantage for the black students.
Using the 10% rule, black students from the Detroit area, where rigid
segregation at the school district level has been maintained, would be
admitted to the University in the same proportion as white students from the
Detroit area.  However, black students from a place like Ann Arbor that had
attempted to integrate its schools would apparrently remain at a big
disadvantage.

Another issue here, though, is that I think the argument about diversity
helping the white students is somewhat of a smokescreen for those afraid to
support Affirmative Action on its more important merits -- compensating for
other bad treatment of black people in the US.  It appears that nobody thinks
they can sell contemporary American society on doing anything to help a
segment of scoiety other than white people.  Maybe they're right, but I find
that rather sad.

Way back there, somebody asked if the eliminiation of Affirmative Action had
turned the University of California campuses into a "sea of white faces." 
The simple answer to that is no.  You don't see a "sea of white faces" in the
big urban areas of California, anywhere.  But I don't tend to see a lot of
black faces wandering around the UC Berkeley campus either.  I don't have the
statistics in front of me, but my impression was that there was a significant
drop in black UC enrollment when Affirmative Action was outlawed, and that
continues to be a source of campus protests.

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