Affirming Affirmative Action

On June 23, the Supreme Court handed down two important decisions on affirmative action policies at the University of Michigan. We applaud the court for upholding the constitutionality of affirmative action, which is an important tool used by universities to seek greater diversity. However, we believe that it should have upheld the systems at both the law school and the undergraduate program, rather than upholding only the former.

In the first case, the Court ruled unconstitutional a system used by the undergraduate admissions office, which awarded a fixed number of points to all minority candidates in the admissions process. In the ruling, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist explained that a student with artistic talent rivaling Picasso would only receive a 5 point (out of 100) boost, while minority students would automatically get 20 points. This example came from the Harvard brief, which stated that the Picasso candidate would probably get accepted instead of a minority candidate, assuming both were competing for a few remaining spots.

We agree with the Court that Harvard’s individualized admissions system—and the unquantified “plus” it gives to minority candidates—is ideal because it provides the fairest treatment to all applicants. However, we also recognize that many state universities lack the resources to give each of over 50,000 applications a thorough look. Unfortunately, many states, facing huge deficits of their own, are even cutting university budgets at a time when the number of prospective students is at record levels—forcing admissions offices to use time-saving short cuts.

These short cuts mean that every factor of admission—SAT, GPA, extracurricular leadership, sports, arts, hardship, and yes, minority status—must be assigned a point value. This system is by no means ideal, but it is the reality. To remove race from consideration because it is quantified—while leaving sports, arts and leadership with point values—would be absurd.

While we are unsure of what the point value should be for race, we are certain that the Court was wrong in categorically stating that it can never be quantified. Striking down the point system creates a new impediment for schools with limited resources—and it may even force them to raise application fees, creating a further obstacle to applicants from working class backgrounds.

In the second case, which challenged Michigan Law School’s use of affirmative action to pursue a “critical mass” of minority students, we applaud the Court’s decision to uphold the admission policy. Diversity is a very important goal for all universities, and critical mass is a bedrock of achieving it. Universities should reflect the makeup of the larger community as a whole, and this is important for two reasons: to build a coherent minority community within the university, and to attract more minority students to that community.

Dissent: Race is Unquantifiable

The point system is founded in the logic that race can be quantified, which it cannot, and the system’s advent into our nation’s colleges has been marked by outright discrimination. Rather than ask what an individual student’s ethnicity will contribute to campus—as the Harvard and the University of Michigan Law School systems do—it merely assigns points based on the color of a person’s skin.

The Staff does not attempt to explain how the point system does not commit unconstitutional discrimination. Rather, it merely explains the system’s expediency. This reasoning is faulty, and belies the premise of law in our society that the Constitution does, in fact, trump an appealing, easy solution. The Staff’s position is analogous to arguing that the Sixth Amendment can be overlooked because a state does not have the resources to appoint public defenders for indigent defendants. Regarding affirmative action, an ideologically worthy goal, the point system is scary indeed..

-Travis R. Kavulla ’06