This coming Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which for those of us in higher education is almost certainly one of the most important cases on the court's docket this year. Abigail Fisher is suing the University of Texas, claiming that the institution violated her rights by using a race-conscious admissions policy to fill spots in its first-year class (Wermiel, 2011). The university admits all Texas students who are in the top decile of their high school class; any remaining spots in the first-year class are filled through a holistic process that considers race alongside other factors. Fisher, who is White, did not finish in the top decile of her high school class and was not admitted to the university, and thus she believes that she has been discriminated against.
As it currently stands, affirmative action and race-conscious admission policies rest essentially on a pair of 2003 Supreme Court decisions, Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger (Rosner, Figueroa, Spencer, & Copeland-Morgan, 2012; Wermiel, 2011). In the Gratz decision, the court held that the University of Michigan violated the Fourteenth Amendment by allocating points in the admission process to all minority students. The Grutter decision held that the University of Michigan Law School's admission process, which considered race as one factor among many, was not unconstitutional. It is this balance—that race can be one qualitative factor in a holistic process—that undergirds affirmative action in higher education in the United States today.
In both of the Michigan cases, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was the swing vote on a divided court (Wermiel, 2011). Unfortunately for those of us who support the use of race-conscious policies, Justice O'Connor retired in 2006 and was replaced by Justice Samuel Alito, an opponent of affirmative action. In addition, Justice Elena Kagan has recused herself from the court's consideration of the Fisher case, as she worked on the case as Solicitor General before her appointment to the bench. What was a 5-4 vote in favor of affirmative action in Grutter seems to now be a 5-3 vote against in Fisher.
At a panel at the annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) last week, several presenters came together to discuss the background and the potential impact of the Fisher decision (Rosner et al., 2012). So far, 71 amicus briefs have been filed on behalf of the University of Texas from a wide range of corporations, associations, and educational groups; 17 have been filed on Fisher's behalf, all from conservative think tanks. Panel attendees were reminded about all the preferences in a selective admission process that favor White students, including legacy status, athletics, and development interests.
If the Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in public school admissions, and, as one presenter feared, overreaches to strike it down in private school admissions (because private schools receive federal monies), it will behoove all of us in higher education to think closely about how we will continue to build diverse student bodies if we cannot consider race at all. Race-neutral admission policies will drastically reshape the composition of our student bodies (Espenshade, 2012). What will we as student affairs practitioners do to respond to the needs of that very different student population? How will we still continue to expose students to others who are from different racial and ethnic backgrounds? As one NACAC presenter put it last week, "Race matters." We should start thinking now about what to do when it stops mattering in admissions.
*Espenshade, T. J. (2012, October 5). Moving beyond affirmative action. The New York Times, p.
A25.
*Rosner, J., Figueroa, R., Spencer, T., and Copeland-Morgan, Y. (2012). The state of affirmative
action: The potential impact of Fisher v. University of Texas. Retrieved from
http://www.nacacnet.org/events/2012/sessions/Documents/C10.pdf
* Wermiel, S. (2011, October 11). SCOTUS for law students: Barbara Grutter, meet Abigail Fisher.
Retrieved from http://www.scotusblog.com/2011/10/barbara-grutter-meet-abigail-fisher/
Joel- I agree with the questions you pose and recognize the importance of this issue to higher education. Affirmative Action has become a topic of discussion in a number of our classes and the conversation usually leads to talk about levels of preparation/achievement of minorities on standardized tests. The Rosner, Figueroa, Spencet and Copeland-Morgan presentation indicates that there is still (unfortunately) a correlation between SES and race in performance on the SAT. I think that this fact indicates some of the issues with public K-12 education in the United States. Until we have a more level playing field for our college applicants in terms of academic and standardized test preparation, I believe we are going to need some level of race/SES-conscious admissions process. -Chelsea Lucio
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting and pertinent topic! I agree with Chelsea that until the playing field in education has been fairly leveled, we will be doing our students a disservice by disregarding race in admissions. The Affirmative Action was approve in Michigan on the grounds that ALL students benefit from a diverse student body, and I feel that we should take strides towards creating a more multicultual campus environment. Different perspectives help to develop critical reasoning skills.
ReplyDeleteOn a separate note, if the girl in the case was not in the top percent of her class to guarantee admission, then she was not entitled to a spot. She has absolutely no hard eveidence that she didn't get in due to her race. I feel that this case does not have much to stand on, because there is no way of knowing why one student was accepted and another denied.
I understand Fisher's disappointment about not being admitted into the university of her choice; however, there may be others reasons why she might have not been accepted to the university. Admissions professionals consider many factors when deciding who to accept into a university. In reading this post, I can't help but wonder whether there were other aspects of her application that precluded her admission (besides not being in the top docile at her high school). Though it is up to the courts to prove whether or not Fisher was discriminated against, I think that race and SES should continue to be a factor in the admissions process because students of color from less privileged, low-income backgrounds continue to face disparate opportunities and challenges in accessing higher education.--Adriana Garcia
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