Bush Questions Collegiate Affirmative Action

Author: Christopher Atwood

Last week the Bush administration filed "friend of the court" briefs opposing the University of Michigan's use of racial preference in admissions. By doing so, the White House cautiously weighed in on the increasing unpopularity of considering race when determining college acceptance. Even considering Bush's hostility to anything resembling racial quotas, the White House opted not to ask the Supreme Court to reverse the 1978 Bakke decision, which allowed race to be one of many factors used in university admissions. Instead, the Bush administration narrowed its critique of the issue, supporting a race-neutral approach to admissions while continuing to say that it backs the goal of racial diversity on college campuses nationwide.

Critics of affirmative action in higher education contend that racial preferences amount to a new form of racism called reverse discrimination, with white students being ignored in favor of less qualified minority applicants in order to maintain diversity. Supporters of racial preferences respond by saying affirmative action is essential as long as minority students remain underrepresented at many public universities. Nationally, blacks make up 11 percent of undergraduate students. At Middlebury, 19 to 21 percent of recently matriculated classes identified as non-Caucasian. Nationally, 17 percent of college and university students identified as such.

According to a recent Newsweek poll, most Americans resist affirmative action in higher education, wary of rules that seem to favor applicants because of what they are as opposed to who they are. In that poll, whites opposed preferences for blacks by a 72 to 22 percent margin, with minorities opposing such preferences by a 56 to 38 percent split.

The Supreme Court must ultimately establish when, if at all, universities should give preference to students based on the color of their skin. If the Supreme Court rules that the use of racial preferences is unconstitutional, public universities across the nation that receive most of their funding from the state and federal government will be most immediately affected by being forced to bring in a racially mixed student body without breaking a possible ban against preferences.

Since Middlebury College has far fewer applicants than most public universities, the admissions process is much more personalized -- many people mull over each application, considering a number of issues that contribute to a student's selection. Race and ethnicity can be one issue among many, but do not insure any student's acceptance.

"Diversity of several kinds is important to Middlebury," said Director of Admissions John Hanson, "geographic, socio-economic, racial, ethnic, religious -- whatever combination of characteristics and circumstances may bring additional light to bear on any given issue.

The Admissions Office mails information to several thousand secondary schools, visits more than one thousand schools annually and makes special outreach efforts for international, inner-city and rural students." He continued, "No college or university can be or should attempt to be all things to all people, but it is consistent with Middlebury's mission statement and curricular emphases to bring as many points of view to bear on as many areas of learning as is possible within the perameters of the liberal arts."

Larger public universities with student bodies in the tens of thousands cannot allocate such specific attention to each applicant and often depend on numerical rather than subjective criteria. Percentiles often inform the make-up of their student bodies, creating an admissions process where race could be used more as affirmative action than as one contributing factor.