Well then, just compete for the white students at or near the top 10 percent. So what? 
Posted on 02/10/2002 3:04:13 AM PST by Brownie74
The 14 students gathered around a table at Skyline High School in Dallas are the kind Texas A&M University wants but has had little luck attracting.
They're near the top of their class, they're college-bound, and most are black or Hispanic.
And not one has applied to Texas A&M.
"The perception is A&M is a white school ... and [that] they won't fit in," said Diane Hranicky, who advises student leaders at Skyline.
Like flagship universities across the country, Texas A&M has struggled to attract top minority students like those at Skyline since courts began eliminating affirmative-action admissions in the late 1990s.
Texas has led the way in devising a system that instead guarantees admissions to the top 10 percent of high school graduates. Other states have enacted similar plans, all with little or no success at luring minorities.
But now, Texas A&M has come up with a new plan it hopes will withstand legal scrutiny and make the school more diverse. Whether the plan will do either is debatable, with universities across the country eager to see how it turns out.
Under a plan tentatively approved by regents in December, the school would pursue the top 20 percent of students at about 250 high schools deemed low-performing or disadvantaged. Special emphasis also will be placed on schools that send few or no students to Texas A&M; Skyline is likely to make the list on that basis, officials say. The students would be admitted if they score 920 on the SAT and took the right high school courses.
The goal is to tap into schools that don't normally send students to Texas A&M, which, like the University of Texas, draws from less than half the state's 1,900 private and public high schools. Officials, who have not released the list, say the plan would draw students of all races from rural and urban schools.
But opponents of the policy already have appeared to say that giving an edge to students at selected schools, even if they aren't all minorities, amounts to affirmative action.
"If they are legitimately using criteria without regard to race, then they're not violating the law," said Roger Clegg, vice president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Washington, D.C. "But I don't believe them, and I think it's hard to believe them."
David C. Rushing, 21, a student at A&M and state vice chairman for the Young Conservatives of Texas, was more direct.
"By allowing certain high schools to be more favored than others, that's discrimination," he said. "We want to make sure the most-qualified students continue to get admitted."
Texas A&M has asked Texas Attorney General John Cornyn to assess the proposal's constitutionality before it proceeds, officials said. With approval, the university would admit up to 500 students from targeted high schools in the fall of 2003.
Reaction to '97 law
Joe Estrada, Texas A&M's associate provost of enrollment, said the plan is a reaction to a stark fact: The 1997 law that provides automatic admission to all high school students in the top 10 percent of their class has not provided diversity.
In 1996, 80.4 percent of Texas A&M incoming freshmen were white, 11.2 percent Hispanic and 3.6 percent black. Last fall, 82 percent were white, 9.9 percent Hispanic and 2.9 percent black. The pattern was similar, though not as dramatic, at UT.
"It's working for everybody equally as a bill of merit, but by no means are we seeing the great numbers of African-Americans and Hispanics enrolling at the university," Mr. Estrada said.
Michael Olivas, a University of Houston law professor who helped design the top 10 percent law, said Texas A&M's proposal makes use of some little-known parts of the law.
According to the law, universities are allowed to have a more elaborate admissions policy than simply admitting the top 10 percent. They may also consider students in the top 25 percent of high school classes, and they may consider certain conditions when doing so. The law says, for example, that colleges may give consideration on the basis of family income, whether a student is from an urban or rural school, or how that school fared in the state accountability ratings.
The conditions that may be considered match many of the factors Texas A&M is using to identify high schools on its list, Dr. Olivas said.
"They don't need legal advice. This is not a racially targeted effort," Dr. Olivas said. "I'm assuming a lot of white students will come out of those efforts as well."
State to watch
Texas has remained the state to watch for admissions policies since the so-called Hopwood case, the 1992 lawsuit by four white University of Texas Law School applicants who said they lost spots to less-qualified minority students.
The case resulted in Texas' top 10 percent law, the nation's first admissions policy based on class rank. In recent years, Florida and California came up with similar policies. Florida has a top 20 percent law, and California grants admission to the top 4 percent. Neither policy has had much success with regard to diversity.
Other states have come up with their own methods to deal with the question while awaiting guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear an appeal in the Hopwood case last year. Cases that started at the University of Michigan are expected to be the first to reach the high court.
At the University of Florida at Gainesville, the percentage of minorities has decreased since the state adopted its 20 percent plan, said Bill Kolb, the college's admissions director. He said the Texas A&M experiment would give states another strategy to consider.
"We're all searching for the magic bullet to bring diversity to our campuses," Mr. Kolb said.
'Stop playing it safe'
The University of Georgia in Athens, which is reworking its admissions process, will monitor Texas A&M to see what happens, said Louis Castenell, dean of education who supervises the school's office of institutional diversity.
"Universities have to stop playing it safe," he said.
If Texas A&M's plan succeeds, it should have an impact nationally, said Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.
"Affirmative action just went down in Georgia, and they have abandoned it at the University of Massachusetts," Dr. Orfield said. "Universities and minority communities are going to be interested in what works."
Texas' other flagship university, UT, has no plans to follow Texas A&M's lead, said director of admissions Bruce Walker.
"It's worth watching," Dr. Walker said. "It's a grand experiment, just like the top 10 percent law is."
Dr. Walker said he's wary because of data showing that students in the top 10 percent outperform students of lower class rank on college work. He thinks admitting students with lower test scores and ranking can only lead to more students dropping out, and he urges more time to judge the effects of the 10 percent law.
"What I fear is we'll get caught in the backwash of this, and the Legislature will say, 'Let's just make automatic admission for the top 20 percent.' That would overwhelm us [with too many applicants]," Dr. Walker said.
Mr. Estrada said two years' worth of data at A&M shows that top 20 percent students fare as well as students of higher class rank.
"They're bright kids," Mr. Estrada said. "Just because they're from low-performing schools doesn't mean they're low-performing students."
Counselors visit schools
While waiting for approval from Mr. Cornyn, Texas A&M is sending counselors to some of the targeted high schools, including Skyline, to talk to students and has invited the schools' principals to College Station, Mr. Estrada said.
Reaching out will make a difference, said Esmeralda Vanegas, an 18-year-old Skyline senior who has applied to UT. Her impression is that A&M is farther from Dallas, though the distances are about the same.
"UT sends me more stuff," she said. "UT was after me."
Ms. Hranicky, the student adviser, said it will help A&M to reach out to schools such as Skyline.
"It is an excellent university," she said. "What we're saying is based on perception, not fact."
At the urging of Kappa Alpha Psi, a black fraternity at A&M, the university agreed to bring 50 high school students to campus later this month to start selling them on the school, said fraternity member Maco Faniel.
"We'll give them a taste of the diversity that Texas A&M has," Mr. Faniel said.
But the 21-year-old, who says he has had a great experience in college, acknowledged it's not an easy sell.
"You may see a Confederate flag on campus," Mr. Faniel said. "If I walk into a classroom, I'm one out of 300. There have been instances in the past where they ask you, 'So how did you get here?' "
Mr. Faniel, who has served on diversity task forces at the college, said the atmosphere for minorities has improved, even if the numbers haven't changed. He said he supports the top 20 percent proposal. The list probably would include his high school, Aldine Eisenhower in the Houston area, Mr. Estrada said.
Others at Texas A&M agree that defeating common perceptions are as important as coming up with new admissions policies.
"From my view, we've got a big problem with perception here at Texas A&M," said Frank Ashley, director of admissions at the school. "A lot of minorities feel, 'If I go to A&M, I'm not going to fit in.' "
Why doesn't Texas A&M just stick to their job of educating people instead of trying to select their students based on the color of their skin?
Then compare Patton's speech about how an Army does everything as a team, with the New Model Army's slogan: An Army of One.
Unity, not diversity, is our strength,
This is meaningless. Suppose their class is a special education class,and the top student has learned how to tie his shoes by himself 9 out of 10 times? Let's not forget that a diploma doesn't mean squat anymore,thanks to diversity.
Maybe Texas A&M should start promising white girlfriends/bitches/'ho's to each male non-white student applicant? How about promising White or Asian roommates to do their homework and take their tests for them? Free crack and a "no-arrest" policy? Why not go whole-hog,and force white families to adopt a minority as a family member?
Marx is rolling in his grave over picking the wrong country.
This push to Diversity, Diversity, Diversity, Diversity, Diversity, Diversity, Diversity, Diversity, Diversity, Diversity, Diversity, Diversity, Diversity, Diversity is ruining our culture. We are made to focus on what is different about us rather than what makes us all alike!
Where is the push for a common culture that we can all thrive in and live like Americans. Jesus, even Dr. King said we should take a man for his character, not the color of his skin or, the language he speaks at home or, the country of origin of his parents.
I am so tired of these cultural reconstructionists trying to fix what ain't broke!!!!
I read an article about this law in Texas Monthly last year. By the time I had finished reading it, I was convinced it was bad law. It's not a fair law at all. What if you are in the top 11% of your class. Your grades and SAT's are better than someone elses from a less competitive school. The other person with lower scores can get in just because they graduated in the top 10%, when someone else made better marks at a more competitive school. (Did that make any sense at all)? LOL
After reading that article, I told my daughter she has to make it in the top 10% of her class. Our top universities are having to deny smart kids, because of this law.
If I ruled the world, I would take that little "race" box off the admissions form you have to check. Let kids be admitted by their hard work and brains, not their skin color. I always check American Eskimo on mine, just to tick them off. It's no body's business what my skin color is.
The national average for SAT scores in 2000 was: 1,019. I suspect that 920 is in the bottom quartile. Looks like Texas A&M wants to be recognized for the quality of student they attract. The real tragedy though is the rejection of those white kids who earnestly worked hard and will be bypassed by preferentially treated minorities who knew they were going to get a free ride and so hung out at the mall or played hoops instead of studying.
Twenty-five years ago, the president of the student body at Texas A&M was Fred McClure. He was elected by a bunch of white kids. Those white kids saw Fred as a "student leader" and not as part of a quota. He was very popular because of his leadership; not because he was black.
Fred is a conservative. Do conservatives have the same right to judge people according to their values and beliefs, or is that another right of Liberals? A black conservative is not afforded the same "rights" as black liberals.
Jesse Jackson; Jesse Lee Peterson. Who does the media go to as representative of black people?
If a black person doesn't "think black" they don't count.
Well then, just compete for the white students at or near the top 10 percent. So what?
OOOOh! Noooo! Texas A&M has a black on the Board of Regents!
Gramsci is at work here.
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