Michigan affirmative action ban will re-segregate universities

[FernBell]

A new ban on affirmative action in Michigan has many in the legal profession speculating on how the measure will affect the state's universities and law schools, and has already triggered a legal challenge.

On Nov. 7, Michigan became the fifth state to adopt a prohibition on affirmative action in college admissions, joining California, Florida, Texas and Washington. The new measure, which bans using race and gender affirmative action in university admissions, has many lawyers fearing that the University of Michigan Law School could become an all-white school that caters to the privileged.

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"It's going to resegregate the universities. There's no question about it," Michigan attorney George Washington, who filed the first lawsuit challenging the ban, said of the new measure.

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"If you tell people that they can't do the only thing that they can do to integrate their student bodies, you are interfering with their ability to comply with civil rights laws," he said.

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Alan Ackerman, a University of Michigan Law School grad and currently a prominent eminent domain attorney in the Detroit area, worries that his alma mater is in trouble as far as minority enrollment goes.

"It may create a school which is limited in its diversity," Ackerman said of the new affirmative action ban. "Without diversity it's not a good law school. We've got to have diversity at that school."



http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1163671521213

[AngryAmish]

1. How is this going to effect Asian applicants?

[Igel]

18. It will probably give them a higher acceptance rate. n/t

[iamjoy]

2. Not To Flame

and maybe it will sound like I've been drinking the Kook-Aid, but how do affirmative action programs NOT violate the Equal Protection Clause?

If a university offers preferred admissions to minorities, they are giving them preferential treatment. Before you flame me, I understand affirmative action is meant to correct gross inequities in the past and I don't downplay those, or the more subtle discrimination that takes place against minorities today (the inherent disadvantages they have even in the absence of institutionalized discrimination).

But - and I'm not a lawyer, so I need help here - how do you make the legal justification that affirmative action programs aaren't discriminatory againt non-minorities (and morally, is it okay to discriminate against a white guy today because of what has happened in the past).

[CTLawGuy]

3. I can field that one

the government may discriminate to serve what is called a "compelling state interest" by the Supreme Court. They may not use a rigid quota, or anything resembling it (like giving a person a certain number of "points" for being minority), but they may take race as a factor among many. The use of race must be "narrowly tailored" to acheive the acceptable goal.


The Supreme Court has said diversity in schools is a "compelling state interest" and thus states may take race into account (with the restriction of course) to effect diversity.

[iamjoy]

4. I'm Not Sure I Like That

It gives me an image of a bunch of white men sitting around looking at applicants and going, "well, this one isn't as qualified as some of the others, but you know, he's black and we want to look like we have diversity."

I would almost rather have points, at least that is consistent. Better yet, a way to assign points based on living in poverty (don't know what metric they would use). Since African Americans tend to live in poverty in disproportionate numbers to Caucasians, this would help them. However, it would also help the poor whites get an equal shot.

[1932]

8. The administration at Michigan is very diverse racially.

It's not a bunch of white people.

Not only that, but what constitutes qualifications is not just SAT scores. Someone who does well with fewer resources (poor schools, no SAT prep courses, no summer enrichment trips to Europe) may get an advantage, and that's not a bad thing.

Also, higher educations function in America isn't supposed to be to recreate the power structure -- it's not to reward everyone who's doing great today with the ability to do great tomorrow. The purpose should be to pull in a very diverse range of opinions, ideas and people, so that new great ideas can work their way into the discussion and rise to the top, so that America is a flexible nation always adapting to changing circumstances, ready to innovate to succeed. That's what the admission process is trying to do when it admits a poor kid from Detroit with all As and lower SAT scores over a kid from Bloomfield Hills with loaded parents, all As and high SAT scores.

[OzarkDem]

12. In historical context it had to be done

Because in the 1960's, a bunch of white men were sitting around looking at applications saying "well this one is qualified, but he's black or she's a woman and we know they won't fit in."

[CTLawGuy]

21. assigning points based on poverty

would work becuase economic status is not a "suspect class" which is entitled to special restrictions on its use.

That means it is much harder for a college to give out points for being a certain race than for being in a certain socioeconomic background.

[1932]

6. When your society has made distinctions based on race for long periods

of time at crucial moments of your nation's development (enslaved, and the freed with no compensation, and then denied political participation for a long long time, including at the moment when your nation industrialized), it's almost impossible to fix that problem when you're not allowed to consider race. There's no real proxy for race.

You can use poverty as a proxy, but you'll not have addressed race.

[GreenPartyVoter]

13. It isn't just about the past. It's also about the present. There was a study done a few years ago

where some resumes were sent out. The ones with names like Taniqua and LeShawn were picked less often, while duplicate resumes by Mary Smith and Robert Brown were more often called for interviews. There is still a bias out there.

[madrchsod]

5. never fear they will admitt enough minorities

to fill their sports programs.michigan,texas, and california are always in the top ten of all the college sports programs....

[1932]

9. The % of kids who play sports at Michigan is among the smallest in the country

Beno Schmidt (IIRC) wrote a book about college sports. One of the things he concluded was that schools like Michigan make almost no academic concessions due to sports since it's such a tiny percentage of their very large student body who play sports. He said that the schools that suffer are small liberal arts colleges. I forget which one he used as an example, but one of those Philadelphia-are colleges -- maybe Haverford -- has to field so many sports teams that half their student body (which is probably heavily white) has to make academic concessions on HALF its student body.

It probably doesn't fit the racial stereotypes, but it's the small white liberal arts colleges you need to criticize on this issue if you're worried that unqualified are getting an unfair advantage because of sports.

And if every sports team at Michigan, from the fencing team to the swim team and every team in between were all black, and nobody else were, they still be significantly underrepresented.

[madrchsod]

14. bad sarcasm..you are right about the sports teams.

[OzarkDem]

7. WTF?

I don't think we're to the point where we're ready to trash Affirmative Action.

Perhaps it would be better to see some definitive research on the issue before we begin a national diaglogue.

Until then, its just another wedge issue.

[hughee99]

10. Did anyone else read this statement like I did?

"The new measure, which bans using race and gender affirmative action in university admissions, has many lawyers fearing that the University of Michigan Law School could become an all-white school that caters to the privileged."

The way it struck me...
Many lawyers believe that there aren't any minority students qualified to attend the University of Michigan Law School if race is not take into account.

Maybe it's just the way it was worded.

[OzarkDem]

11. Yes, I did too

I always thought U of Michigan was a "liberal" school, too.

One would think lawyers would have a better grasp of logic.

[1932]

15. They don't have to speculate. They just have to look at the UC system.

When you base admissions on SAT scores and GPA, white kids from wealthier white neighborhoods with parents who went to college and know the drill on how to get into good colleges do better when it comes to getting admitted to good colleges.

I don't think Americans realize how much the reproduction of success and the reproduction of failure happens in this country that you really have to make an effort to create a society that doesn't condemn people to failure and guarantee success for others based on where and to whom you were born. And that's wrong because the capacity to succeed is distributed equally even if the resources are not.

[hughee99]

16. Saying white kids from wealthier neighborhoods

have a big advantage is not the same as saying that there are no qualified minority applicants.

I agree with your overall points, my original post was referring to a specific line in the OP.

[1932]

17. And sayign that only looking at GPA and LSAT scores will produce all-white

classes isn't the same thing as saying there are no minority students who would make great Michigan-trained lawyers.

[Igel]

19. That's just about what they're saying.

At UCLA I was in student government and went to all sorts of odd-ball meetings, frequently with high-ranking administrators (hey, we had a regular meeting with the Chancellor, and could schedule others as needed). This was just as the anti-affirmative-action measure was being implemented.

The administrators all had two serious concerns: (1) minority enrollment would plummet. (2) that the GPA/drop-out/degree-completion numbers for the minorities that they had been admitting would come out.

On (1), they were right. But on (2), they were dead wrong: the dismal graduation rates, statistically significant difference in GPA, and the difference in time-to-degree *should* have been public knowledge, not a secret that slipped out by accident in a meeting with the registrar, undergraduate admissions officer, and the like. They talked about admission numbers when they should have been talking graduation numbers--but that would have been far too embarrassing, both to the university and to the "communities" involved.

Under affirmative action blacks and Latinos--especially men--had a much higher drop-out rate, a longer time to degree, and lower GPAs. This *despite* spending a few million a year on race-based tutoring and counselling services specifically for them. The numbers held true across university systems.

UC's enrollment for minorities is about where it was before Prop. 209 (?). But they're in less prestigious schools, by and large: the requirements for graduation aren't as high, and I'm willing to bet that more minorities are *graduating* than before, i.e., fewer are dropping out. However a secular trend has been that fewer and fewer black males apply and are admitted, but not for reasons related to Prop. 209.

[1932]

20. Well, I guess you don't have to worry about getting them through college

if they're not there in the first place.

Admissions and graduation are two separate problems that both require their own strategies. But you don't have to worry about graduation if enrollment drops.

The level enrollment numbers might have to do, by the way, with the fact that the UC system has added a campus since 209 passed. Their capacity has increased. Also, I wouldn't sneeze at the fact that minority enrollment has dropped at the best schools.