AS A HIGH school junior, I attended a school assembly on affirmative action. Given that I went to high school in a liberal college town in the 1990s, the assembly was not all that notable. What is notable is that the town was Ann Arbor, Mich., and the presentation centered around the University of Michigan's so-called point system.
Michigan's undergraduate admissions policy, along with its law school admissions practices, recently have come under fire in the media and the courts. The cases of Gratz v Bollinger and Grutter v Bollinger now are in the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. Regardless of the outcome in that court, the cases could well follow the path of another affirmative action case, Regents of the University of California v Bakke, to the Supreme Court. In Bakke, the Court neither decisively upheld nor condemned affirmative action. The best possible outcome of these lawsuits would be an unambiguous defense of affirmative action as a legitimate way to combat inequalities in college admissions.
Deciding whom to accept at a competitive university is in no way cut and dry. It is not as simple as taking the students with the highest Board scores; if it were, the California system would not be looking to eliminate the SAT. It is not as easy as taking the students with the highest high school grades. If it were, there wouldn't be a need for essays and SATs. There is no way for colleges to discount an applicant's background and experiences when considering his application. And race is part of that background.
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When evaluating applications, the University of Michigan is guided by a worksheet that allows for a certain number of points to be given for a myriad of criteria, with the most possible points being 150. Among those criteria are grades, Board scores, electing to take challenging classes, the quality of admissions essays, leadership, service and "personal achievement."
This information can be seen at www.umich.edu/~urel/admissions/faqs/q&a.html. All of these factors are in the applicants' control, and there is little controversy - with the possible exception of SAT scores - over whether they should be considered in admissions.
Michigan also awards points for factors that are out of the applicant's control. These include attending a competitive high school, legacy status, coming from a geographic area that is underrepresented on campus, coming from an economically disadvantaged background, attending a high school with a predominantly minority population and, of course, being an underrepresented minority.
Applicants have little or no control over any of these criteria, yet the only one under attack is the consideration of race. In the admissions policy at Michigan, the first three - attending a competitive high school, legacy status and unfamiliar hometown - all are counted separately. The rest of the criteria all contribute to a possible 20 points. The number of points awarded simply for being a minority is relatively small.
Given this, and the low ratio of underrepresented minority to white applicants, it is unlikely that minority applicants are, without merit of their own, taking spots that white applicants feel they deserve.
The small number of points given to underrepresented minorities also serves to offset other points that minorities are not as likely to receive. Because of the historical exclusion of minorities in general, - and African-Americans in particular - from higher education, minorities are less likely to get points for being a legacy.
Affirmative action is not, nor should it be, a permanent solution, and it certainly is not a perfect system. It does, however, have both present and future advantages. In the immediate context, it helps to increase diversity on college campuses. College is about more than computer science and medieval history, it's about interacting with others.
This experience enhances the value of college for all students, not just minorities. This is evidenced by the support of corporations like General Motors for Michigan's policy, which can be seen at www.umich.edu/~urel/admissions/support.
As far as future advantages, the only way to lessen the economic and academic gap between whites and underrepresented minorities is to promote access to education for all qualified applicants, even if they come from a disadvantaged background.
(Megan Moyer's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at mmoyer@cavalierdaily.com)
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