The Supreme Court is currently considering the case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which centers on whether affirmative action should play a role in student admission.
As it currently stands, any Texas high school student who graduates in the top 10 percent of his or her class is given automatic admission to University of Texas at Austin. Those students account for over 70 percent of incoming freshman.
The other 25 percent to 30 percent of incoming freshman are admitted based on what the University of Texas at Austin calls a “holistic” approach, which means the admissions department evaluates everything from a student’s extra-curricular activities to income to race.
It’s the latter “holistic” approach that white student Abigail Fisher is suing over, as she believes it gave applicants of color an advantage over her.
Debate has erupted around the country and on the Austin campus about whether Fisher is right. Three University of Texas students join The Takeaway at KUT to give their opinions.
Mac McCann is a freshman at University of Texas at Austin. He’s also the public relations director for the Libertarian Longhorns. He was admitted as a 'ten percenter.' He believes that Affirmative Action discriminates against certain groups.
Samantha Robles, a third-year social work student and coordinator of We Support UT, a student coalition that advocates for the holistic review process. She was admitted as a ten percenter.
Crystal Zhao is a senior majoring in communication studies. She’s also a University-wide representative in student government. She was admitted as an-out-of-state student on the holistic approach. She has mixed feelings about the case.
"I disagree with the use of race at all in the admissions process," McCann says. "It allows people, like Miss. Fisher — who the University already said wouldn't have been admitted regardless of race — it allows her to resent a certain group of people because they do have an advantage, which I don't think is necessary."
McCann says that the 10 percent rule is the reason for most of the university's diversity anyway, and that including race as a factor just gives white applicants, like Fisher, the opportunity to claim that they were denied admission on the basis of race.
"If anything, using race as a factor is degrading to minorities," McCann says. "It's implying that they actually need this help, that they need this boost. I think that's unacceptable in today's society."
Samantha Robles is less certain that getting rid of affirmative action entirely is the answer. "I think it's very idealistic," she says of McCann's position, which assumes that there is not inequality to contend with. Still, she says, "The universities in Texas can not fix something that's going on [in] K-12."
Crystal Zhao is worried that if affirmative action is struck down, it might affect the 10 percent rule. "People can argue that that is a form of affirmative action."
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Comments [6]
Affirmative action policies are a horrible and evil practice; these policies are meant to make people whom are of color have abilities they don't have...We need to get rid of these theories PROMPTLY
This is a tangential point, but I was interested to read about the proposals of the current French government to ban homework from all schools. Their rationale is that wealthier parents who can afford the time to assist their children with homework, or pay someone else to, is inherently unfair. Given that most of the economic differences that ultimately determine educational outcomes in the vast majority of cases, are a hangover from institutionalized racism, I think this would be a very interesting move in this country. Like integrating schools and affirmative action, I don't believe it is *the* answer, for obvious reasons, but like affirmative action, I think it would be another useful tool. Obviously this would be hugely unpopular, because everyone loves an unfair advantage, and kids who can have their mum do the math or build the diorama and turn a C into an A obviously have one. But concerned parents hardly need worry, they still have a huge advantage overall, it's just they wont be able to get away with directly bumping up their kids marks, which has come to be the acceptable face of cheating. Is it any wonder kids (who could afford home computers) took to downloading homework off the internet so quickly in such environments?
I think the overall point is that there are already artificial advantages out there for the wealthy, that no one complains about because we worship wealth and never question how it is misused because we have a tendency to do exactly the same when we get it. That's why we need objective ways to make the game fairer. After all, what happened to sportsmanship? Ask Lance, I guess.
Depending on your take on Governor Romney's description, his search for women to fill his cabinet in Massachusetts was either the definition of affirmative action, the definition of tokenism, or something else entirely.
If we may add some irony, the whole notion of holistic evaluation was created by Harvard to keep out Jews. http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_10_10_a_admissions.html Shall we throw out all holistic criteria, then?
What baffles me about this discussion is there is no questioning of the assumption that other factors in 'holistic assessment' are not also discriminatory. For example, where is the outcry about athletes who have lower grades getting into universities? (And getting scholarships, too!)
And conversely, why isn't racial diversity valued as positively as leadership, athleticism, and other "well-roundedness"? If we value diverse characteristics of individuals in a learning community, then trying to remedy centuries of policies that devalued certain races seems all the more reason to regard affirmative action as a positive, not negative.
I'm with Ralph Deeds
Here's a bit of my personal history that bears on the issue of affirmative action.
1953 I graduated from University High School, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There were no minority students and no minority faculty. (I can only remember meeting one African American person while living 10 years in Baton Rouge--the woman who came to our home once a week to iron my father's shirts. The town was totally segregated.
1953-57--Cornell University--There were only two African-American students in my freshman class of 1,800, one boy, Bo Roberson, a star running back and one girl whose name I don't recall. I only recall one African-American faculty member--Economics Professor Rice.
1958--U.S. Army Reserve Officer Basic Training Ft. Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. Zero minorities or women in my class.
1958-60 Harvard Business School--Zero African-Americans, zero women in my class and zero minority faculty members.
1960--GM Headquarters--zero minorities in salaried jobs; women confined to secretarial jobs, plus one nurse and one librarian; African-Americans found only in janitorial and non-skilled blue collar jobs. Detroit suburbs highly segregated. The leading department store had zero African-Americans clerks on the floor. Minorities confined to jobs in the stock rooms and warehouse. Detroit Edison was using IQ tests as a hiring requirement for entry level jobs. The lily white composition of the Detroit Police and Fire Departments contributed to racial issues in the city and contributed to the 1967 riot.
Today, as a result of legally required and voluntary affirmative action programs, Cornell and Harvard have a significant number of minority students and faculty. Harvard Business School now admits women. General Motors has several African-Americans and women in vice president and other executive jobs, and they are employed in virtually all accounting, engineering, skilled trades and other jobs throughout the company. A woman is CEO of IBM, and there are many other women CEOS in American companies. (Nevertheless, women's compensation for comparable jobs remains significantly below that of men.) Minorities and women are employed in all classifications in Detroit department stores. And most suburban neighborhoods are, to varying degrees, integrated. Unfortunately, the city of Detroit is even less integrated than it was when I moved there in 1910.
The message I'm attempting to convey is that the transformation that I experienced would not have been possible without affirmative action for minorities and women. It's an effective and practical way to rectify discrimination in companies, schools, police and fire departments and other organizations. As long as minorities are under-represented in colleges and universities and women are paid less than men in comparable jobs, there is, in my opinion, a valid role for affirmative action.
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