According to this article Bush delivered quite a blow to big schools affirmative action methodologies for accepting minority students.
Why on earth should Bush be backing this? Has this not been going on for a while?
What are others views on this type of profiling. Any Lawyers out there think the supreme court will rule for Michigan State?
Well, they’d have to overturn Bakke to do it.
I think Bakke was a poor decision, so I’m hoping they do overturn it.
As I understand it, Bakke more-or-less prohibited reverse discrimination, but it left a bit of wiggle room. So, the Court could rule that the Michigan system fits within the wiggle room. Or, I suppose they could totally undo Bakke and permit reverse discrimination. Or, they could go the other way, and eliminate all wiggle room.
I expect them to leave Bakke alone, but find that UM’s plan violated it. However, I do not expect a unimous decision.
Please don’t bring my beloved alma mater into it, he referred to that other school down in Ann Arbor.
I’m kind of puzzled why he chose to spoke on it. All he could do is alienate some voters and the matter is in the hands of the Supreme Court. What the president thinks really isn’t relevant to the court.
As a Michigan Sate Alum I feel the need to correct this: It is actually the University of Michigan, not MSU.
I think politically this is a terrible move for Bush. Despite his best efforts to make this seem as narrow as possible, it still comes off as racist/classist. Especially when coupled with the Pickering Nomination, the Lott debacle, and the tax cut.
The real legal issue here is whether the U of M has “quotas”. The school has claimed that it doesn’t have quotas, just that it believes that a diverse student body is a asset to the University. In other words, it gives extra “points” to minority applicant, but it doesn’t have a minimum number if minority students it feels it must accept. I would whole heartedly support it if Universities got rid of all nonacademic point systems. This includes those for legacy students, as well as athletes. Since this clearly isn’t going to happen, then I can’t be too angry about specfic ones.
As for who is going to win: the U of M has won in the lower courts, so it’s not unlikely that they could find it held up in the Supreme Court. I think it’s anybody guess, but I’m putting my money on the University.
As I understand it, it’s normal for the White House to take a position on cases like this one. Presumably, it is believed that the Court may take the President’s POV into account in reaching a decision.
Since the White House filed an amicus curiae brief, I am glad that Bush first made a public statement. It was a chance for him to present his POV with his preferred spin. It was interesting to me that he forcefully expressed support for the value of “diversity,” and that he espoused the “Texas Plan.” The Texas Plan allows the top 10% of each high school to be admitted to the U of Texas. IMHO it constitutes unfair discrimination, though not so blatant as what UM is doing.
There are a number of us (mostly right-wingers) who see quotas and differential standards by race as types of racial discrimination. We would have been upset if Bush had not taken the position that he did. My impression is that quotas are not terribly popular, so I think Bush’s stance won’t hurt him politically. It might even help him.
december, show me how U of M’s admission practices equate to quotas?
What I liked is that the first news story I saw reported Bush was asking his advisors for a brief that would support his contention that affirmative action should not be used.
It was too much like the old joke, “A Democrat knows the question, and gets a study to find the answer, and a Republican knows the answer, and gets a study to find the question.”
Life imitating one-liners.
As others have pointed out, it’s the University of Michigan, not Michigan State University. Specifically it’s the University of Michigan Collage of Law, one of the more high powered schools in the country. This fight is not over admission to the undergraduate collages, where the Presidents favored system of promoting student body diversity by automatically admitting the top 10% of the graduating class of any high school, but law school admissions where the President’s pet plan would have no application at all.
Apparently the plaintiff in the present fight wants admissions based entirely on undergrad record and the law school aptitude test. Apparently the U of M thinks that sort of a system gives them a lily white student body and has set up their own system which involves assigning points to their admission considerations. Being a member of a minority group gets points in the total. Other stuff gets points too—if one of your parents graduated from the Michigan Law Schools that’s worth more points that being Black. Your LSAT score, your undergraduate record, living out of Michigan, and Lord knows what else is figured into the final score. Of course the biggest hunk of points is for the LSAT score. All this is according to a friend who is a recent grad of U of M law school.
This the President says is a reverse engineered quota system. I doubt that. There will be a bunch of “friend of the court” briefs fined in this thing, the President’s opinion as foisted on him by who knows who is not the last word on this problem. Just remember, guys who were legacies at Yale may not be in the best position to make judgments about professional and graduate school admission standards.
As it was explained to me the U of M system gives points for various things, if an applicant accumulates 100 points they are offered admission. According to the talk show I was watching, being black gets 20 points. Getting a perfect SAT score gets 12 points. To me that seems just a bit out of balance.
Personally I would like to see all affirmitive action recast in socio-economic terms instead of race. I think there is nothing wrong with giving “points” to someone who comes from an underperforming school, or has faced some other hardship like a family in poverty etc. Giving points based only on race is unjust, unfair to minorities and divisive. The same goal of having a diverse campus can be reached w/o using race per se as a factor.
Of course “friend of the court” briefs filed, not fined.
This case presents some interesting points for a political discussion.
Bakke was all about outlawing quotas, i.e., reserving “x” number of spots for a certain minority group. So, is the UM system a de facto quota system? I think that’ll be a tough one to prove. I think they’ll have to look at more general anit-discrimination laws.
A lot has been said about the point system. I haven’t seen the whole list, but what I’ve seen is: 12 pts for perfect SAT (I assume this is LSAT since it’s the Law school that is being addressed), 80 pts for GPA, 1 pt for essay (heard this on the news, but I’m somewhat sceptical as it seems rather low), and 20 pts for being Black, Hispanic, or Native American. So, is it a question of the 20 pts (i.e., it would’ve been OK if it was "only " 5 pts), or that fact that any pts at all are given just for the color of your skin? (Bill Cosby’s kids get 20 pts, but Joe “$20k/yr” Sixpack’s kids get none since they’re white).
As interracial marriage becomes more and more common, how do we define a person being “Black”. Do we just get to decide ourselves? Do I have to show you a picture of my “Black as the ace of spades” grandma even though I pretty much look white?
How about Hispanic? I used to work with I guy from Spain who couldn’t understand why his kids got an advantage for having the last name “Garcia”. I’m going to love the debate on this issue when it arises, and I’m sure it will eventually.
According to my friend, being Black gets you 3 points, being a legicy gets you 4 points, having a 150 score on the LSAT gets you 150 points.
Spavined Gelding, actually both the Law School and the University undergraduate admissions are being charged. These started as two separate law suits filed by two separate women.
Gelding I believe there are two cases, one for undergrad and one dealing with the law school.
Interestingly there are 20 points available for economic disadvantage (re my point above) and 20 additional points availabale for minority status. A perfect SAT gets 12, and a 4.0 gets as much as 80. A 3.0 gets 60 points, so a minority with a 3.0 receives the same points as a white (or non-underrepresented minority) with a 4.0.
Rhum:
Can you get 40 pts if you’re poor AND a minority? That would be a lot as my understanding is 100 is what is needed for admission.
Sorry I fired off that question before checkin your link. It states that you have to pick one.
Does anyone know how they verify whether or not you are a minority?
On this auspicious day, I’d just like to thank everyone for finally leveling the table enough so that wealthy caucasian males are no longer affected by racism and bigotry.
Three cheers!
Okay, in return for allowing me that snide outburst, I give you the text of Bakke, as well as materials on Texas v. Hopwood.
This could be argued either way. I think it equates to a quota because:
– black and Hispanics get a fixed formula adjustment, regardless of their actual background
– the adjustment formula had been chosen in order to produce a pre-determined percentage of black and Hispanic students. (I heard someone on TV say this.) It certainly wasn’t based on a showing that standard evaluation methods would be made more accurate by means of this adjustment.
BTW, does anyone have a cite to the actual Bakke decision or an analysis of it. What sorts of reverse discrimination does it actually prohibit?