New York Times

October 6, 2012

Colleges Value Diversity, but Will the Court?

By LINCOLN CAPLAN

The most anticipated case of the new Supreme Court term, to be argued on Wednesday, was brought by Abigail Noel Fisher, a white student who was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin in 2008.

Ms. Fisher graduated from Louisiana State University this year, so there is good reason for the court to dismiss the case: her lawsuit is not a class action, and the only claim that remains is for the return of her $100 application fee. But eight justices (Elena Kagan is recused) will consider her contention that the University of Texas’ effort to create a racial mix in the student body that more closely matches that of the state population violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In 2008, the university admitted about four-fifths of its freshman class by automatically taking the top 10 percent of graduates from every public high school. The state adopted the strategy to increase minority admissions after the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down race-conscious admissions there in 1996. But the university concluded that the 10 percent program left minority representation at too low a level for “the full benefits of diversity to occur.”

To further its aim of having a student body that is “meritorious and diverse in a variety of educationally relevant ways,” the university admits the rest of its students through individual assessments, with race being one in a long list of factors, including grades and activities. Many worry that the court will use this case, Fisher v. University of Texas, to overturn a 2003 decision, Grutter v. Bollinger, which allowed colleges and universities to advance “racial diversity” as a valid goal for their institutions and for society, as long as they did not make race the determining factor in admissions. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in Grutter, “In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.”

In the years since that ruling, there has been widespread, ambitious and valuable experimentation to ensure that all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups have equal access to higher education and that colleges and universities serve broader public goals. Many of these experiments could be threatened by a ruling in Ms. Fisher’s case that prohibited using race in any manner.

Rutgers University, New Jersey’s leading state institution, for example, is working to increase diversity by reaching out to low-income middle and high school students who live in the communities where its four campuses are located. In 2007, the university started the Future Scholars program, which accepts 200 eighth graders a year, the great majority of them black or Hispanic. It provides five years of academic and other support, and uses Rutgers students, many also black and Hispanic, to provide tutoring, academic advising and counseling. The older students are critically important role models for the younger ones.

If the Supreme Court prohibited consideration of race in admissions, it would be difficult for Rutgers to provide well-matched mentors, because the number of Hispanics and blacks would very likely decline. In fact, Rutgers’s broad effort to build connections with local communities, businesses and employers would be undermined if it were barred from making efforts to ensure some level of racial diversity on its urban campuses.

Syracuse University, a private institution, has created a partnership with the city, the school district, corporations, nonprofit groups and philanthropic organizations called “Scholarship in Action.” It rests on the idea that the health of universities is bound up with that of their communities. The city of Syracuse, almost evenly divided between whites and minorities, suffers from widespread poverty and is part of one of the most racially segregated metropolitan areas in the country.

One goal of the project is to revitalize the city through teamwork between university researchers and local entrepreneurs. Another is to create a pipeline to the university for students in the local schools. Syracuse University has admitted at least 200 local students, including one who was homeless in high school. While they went to low-performing high schools, they were high-performers there and most are doing well at the university. Many would not be there if the university could not take race and socioeconomic status into account.

Likewise, private, selective colleges in rural areas — like Bates College in Maine and Grinnell in Iowa — are working to increase their racial mix because it is so important for students’ intellectual, academic and social development. For these small colleges, a ruling that ended Texas-type affirmative action would be likely to reduce their diversity and, as they told the Supreme Court in a brief in the Fisher case, diminish the quality of the education they offer.