Bacow supports University of Michigan

President Larry Bacow joined other university officials in their defense of affirmative action in university admissions during a speech at a celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day yesterday.

Yves-Rose SaintDic, the director of affirmative action at Tufts' Office of Equal Opportunity, said that Bacow announced that the University will file a brief on behalf of the University of Michigan, joining Harvard. Princeton officials have said they may also submit a brief, as has Congressman Dick Gephardt (D-MO).

Last week, the Bush administration filed a brief opposing Michigan's affirmative action policy. The State of Florida and a number of conservative and libertarian advocacy organizations also submitted opinions opposing the university's policies.

The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would weigh in on the debate by listening to two cases concerning the University of Michigan, one involving undergraduate admissions and the other involving the law school.

The undergraduate lawsuit, Gratz v. Bollinger, was filed against Michigan in 1997 on behalf of two white applicants rejected by the university's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. The same year, Barbara Grutter, a white female, sued the law school after she was denied admission. US District Judge Bernard Friedman ruled in favor of Grutter in March of 2001, declaring Michigan's admissions policies unconstitutional.

The undergraduate debate revolves around University of Michigan's system of evaluating applications from underrepresented groups and whether it denies white students equal protection guaranteed by the constitution.

Undergraduate applicants to the College of Literature, Science and the Arts are evaluated based on a 150 point system, according to CNN. Twenty points are given to certain minorities, those with a socio-economic disadvantage, and scholarship athletes. However a perfect essay receives only three points and leadership and service or personal achievement on state, regional and national levels receives only one, three, and five points respectively.

The law school's policies are not as clearly defined: its admissions office attempts to enroll a "critical mass" of minority students, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported.

The issue became more controversial last week when Bush came down strongly on the side of the plaintiff in a brief saying "the method used by the University of Michigan to achieve this important goal is fundamentally flawed." The brief did not oppose all forms of affirmative action and said that there were other methods which would allow the University of Michigan to maintain diversity in its student body.

Tufts has an affirmative action program wherein the University bears "the responsibility for making every effort to identify and alleviate underutilization of minorities," but it does not set specific rules as to how this is implemented _ and what role this plays in admissions. Tufts admissions officers said that they view applications on a case-by-case basis.

Depending on the nature of the ruling, it could affect Tufts because while the University is private, it receives federal funds.

The last Supreme Court decision on affirmative action in college admissions, California v. Bakke, was issued in 1978 and has since been used as a defense in affirmative action cases. The Chronicle of Higher Education explained in a recent article that despite the 5-4 decision in that case, colleges have relied on Justice Lewis F. Powell's separate opinion that "public colleges could not use quotas in admissions but could give some consideration to race in an effort to enroll a diverse student body for educational reasons."

The original split decision has long been controversial and has allowed lesser courts considerable leeway in interpretation. Although there are hopes that the current proceedings might clarify the issue, The Chronicle points out that, ideologically, the Supreme Court is split evenly, and it is not likely that a definite decision will be reached.

Tufts Political Science Professor Ken Portney believes that Bush's move could be the Republican Party capitalizing on midterm election victories and its "conservative ideology is coming out." He also said it could be an attempt to appeal to more hard-line conservatives, many of whom the party has alienated in the past.

But many believe that curtailing affirmative action policies could have a drastic effect on the makeup of universities' student bodies. At the University of California at Berkeley, the percentage of African-American students in the entering class fell from 6.8 percent in 1997 to 2.4 percent in 1998, the first year after affirmative action policies were abandoned.

The Supreme Court will hear the law school and undergraduate cases together on April 1; its decisions are expected by June.