U-M "Teaches" its Students

by R. Colin Painter
The use of race in university admissions policies has recently come under attack across the country. U-M itself currently is a defendant in two lawsuits awaiting trial in U.S. District Court. The first involves two students who were denied admission to the University, allegedly because of their race — they are white. The second lawsuit was brought by Barbara Grutter against the U-M law school, again because she was denied admission and believes her race was the deciding factor against her. Ms. Grutter was also white.

A forum to explain and discuss the University’s legal defense and its continuing support of race-based admissions took place Wednesday, September 29, in the Union ballroom. Speakers included Jeff Lehman, dean of U-M’s law school, and University Provost Nancy Cantor. The attorney for the University in the Grutter case, John Payton, was also present.

Ms. Cantor was the first to speak, and offered a long defense of the use of race as a factor in the University’s admissions policy. Affirmative action in its admissions, said Ms. Cantor, is one of the “most important and challenging issues facing this university.” She also made the claims that the country as a whole is still heavily segregated and that minorities and women are victims of the biased attitudes throughout the government and the private sector. The “basic assumption upon which our ... defense rests is the importance of race in this country at this time.”

Ms. Cantor further stated that minorities, especially blacks, are predominantly of lower socio-economic standing than their white counterparts, and thus need extra help getting into the more selective schools like U-M. “One grows up in this country ... in very different worlds,” said Ms. Cantor. She applauded the U.S. military as a good example of racial integration, and said “the military and higher education have always seen it as [their] responsibility to bring the races together.”

Ms. Cantor also claimed that racial diversity enhances the learning opportunities at the University. “Race matters to the educational value ... that we provide at this University,” she said. Through the integration achieved by race-based admissions, Cantor said, “we see new possibilities for the self,” and “crossing the boundaries of race and ethnicity ... challenges our presumptions.” She also quoted past U-M President James Angell, who said “the value of a Michigan education is directly proportional to how well we diffuse the values students bring to this campus.”

To the many critics of race-based admissions policies, Ms. Cantor warned that her “opponents will say the real question is the ... specter of reverse discrimination.” She responded to these fears by saying they are quite out of proportion; since the size of the applicant pools are so widely disparate between blacks and whites, eliminating all the minority applicants from the admissions process would only raise a white student’s chance of admission by about 2 percent.

However, her views are not universally accepted. The U-M awards 20 points are for race or for socio-economic disadvantage, but not both. Thus, critics say, all poor minority students receive 20 points because of their economic disadvantage, whereas the only students awarded 20 points for racial minority standing are those who are not socio-economically disadvantaged, such as minority students of middle class or upper class families. Therefore, one may ask, is it fair to give an upper class black student from a wealthy public or private school an admissions preference over a poor white student from a rural town and a school of only marginal resources? Ms. Cantor did not comment on this particular argument.

Jeff Lehman, dean of U-M’s law school, gave a much shorter speech defending the admissions policies of the law school. He said that since white students are over-represented in the law school, a law suit against racial preferences makes no sense. He further claimed that engineering special admissions formulas to create diverse student bodies is the key to building the “best class we possibly can to promote our institutional goals.” He did not state exactly what those institutional goals were, nor how the students were used to achieve them.

To allay the fears of critics that under qualified minority students might be given a undeserved place at the law school, Dean Lehman responded that “we do not admit anyone who does not deserve to be at the law school.” He further claimed that “our admissions policy is right for Michigan,” and racial preferences are legal.

The last speaker was John Payton, a distinguished civil rights attorney from Washington D.C., and the legal defense for the University in the Grutter case. His speech focused on the legal defense itself, and he quoted numerous Federal and Supreme Court decisions which supported his stance. He also warned that Michigan could soon follow California and Washington, which both passed propositions completely outlawing any racial preferences in hiring or admissions in any public organization, including schools.

One critic pointed out that the panelists regurgitated lots of numbers and facts, but completely ignored whether or not racial bias in admissions was moral or right. They also never asked how current students of the University felt about its admissions policies. In sum, the “teach-in” raised many questions, but answered very few. MR