Texas Universities Must Wait One Year Before Making Changes (Racial Admission Policies}

Lubbock, TX, Avalanche-Journal ^ | 12-29-03 | AP

[Theodore R.]

Universities must wait one year before making changes UT considers race-based college admissions policy

AUSTIN (AP) — Ethnic diversity at the University of Texas at Austin remains low more than a decade after four white students filed a lawsuit against the nation's largest university, setting off the demise of affirmative action in Texas.

The university is considering a new admissions policy that would include race as a factor in selecting students in an effort to boost minority enrollment — a move allowed by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2003.

"We've seen significant improvement in diversity on campus, but I don't think we've gotten to where we need to be," UT President Larry Faulkner told The Associated Press. "There's still a need for growth in the minority population."

By Texas law, schools can't change admissions policies until a year after they are approved by governing boards. That means if the UT System Board of Regents adopts a new policy in early 2004, the next class admitted using race as a factor will be the 2005 freshman class.

Texas A&M University — the state's other flagship university — announced Dec. 5 that it will change its admission standards to improve minority enrollment, but without using race as a selection factor.

The A&M plan will make attracting minorities to the 45,000-student campus a priority, but will do so through measures such as increased outreach and $5,000-a-year scholarships targeting first-generation students from lower-income families.

The University of Texas aims to attain "critical mass," or enrollment of enough minority students so that no one feels as if he or she speaks for an entire race, and there are a variety of minority voices, said Bruce Walker, UT's vice pro vost and director of admissions. That would teach all students that stereotypes don't work, he said.

But with race-based admissions more than a year away, critical mass may be even more distant.

Michelle Callaway, a UT senior corporate communications student from Houston, said she is the only black student in most of her classes.

"A lot of times other students may take your word to be representative of the whole race, but that's not the case," she said. "A lot of times you are representative of your race, whether you like it or not."

According to the university, 52 percent of classes with five or more students in fall 2002 had no black students and 79 percent had one or none. During the fall 2002 semester, blacks made up 3.2 percent of the enrollment at UT, according to numbers released by the Texas Higher Education Co ordinating Board.

Hispanics, the state's largest minority group at 32 percent of the population, made up 12.3 percent of UT's enrollment in 2002, according to the coordinating board. The university's enrollment is just above 50,000.

Henry Flores, political science director at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, said without affirmative action to guarantee minority access, "we're creating a gap that was there when I went to college, between Hispanics and Hispanics that have an education."

"That means fewer people voting, understanding the political process, issues," he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that colleges and universities could use race as a consideration in admissions, overturning the 1996 Hopwood decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Cheryl Hopwood was one of the four white applicants who sued the UT law school in 1992 after they were denied admission in favor of minority candidates.

After the lower court struck down affirmative action with the Hopwood decision, minority enrollment in Texas' largest universities took a hit. The numbers have inched back up, partly because of the "top 10 percent rule," which guarantees acceptance to any student who finishes high school in the top 10 percent of his or her class.

President Bush, Texas governor at the time of the Hopwood decision, has held up the top 10 percent rule as a model for race-blind admissions policies.

But at overcrowded UT, Faulkner said the law hampers the school's ability to accept qualified students who may not have graduated in the top 10 percent. While some education officials have promoted ending the top 10 percent rule, Faulkner advocates capping the number of students accepted under the rule.

"Students are not one-dimensional, and we need the opportunity to look at all aspects of a student," Faulkner said. "There needs to be room to look at the spectrum."