Nick Bouchard
10/1/13
Color and Money
Jack Dougherty
Color and the Admissions Process
In September of this year, a class run by professor Jack Doughty simulated an admissions process modeled after the Mitchell Stevens’s novel Creating a Class. While there were many issues that came up during the process, one of the most consistently brought up topics was that of race, and the value it should have in the acceptance process. One of the main reasons why this was so heavily debated was because of difficulty executing this process legally. The difficultly comes from how Affirmative Action policies have evolved through many Supreme Court rulings since its creation. Despite the challenges of executing the policies legally, the admissions group decided to have Affirmative Action policies play a significant role through a diversity score that added to the overall score of an applicant. This was because of the overall belief by the group that to have a diverse entering class was highly important in both promoting equal opportunity, and in accepting the highest quality of students in the entering class.
Since it’s implementation in 1965 the issue of Affirmative Action has sparked an enormous amount of controversy. Much of that has to do with this nation’s history with racial prejudice and how we as a nation are trying to make up for the injustices brought against minorities in this country. Nathan Glazer, a critic of Affirmative action has described it as “ineffective” because of how it has further reinforced discrimination and tipped the balance on the other side of the color barrier (Glazer, 1975). An example of this ineffectiveness could be seen in Stevens’s Creating a Class. Stevens confronts this when he has to turn away an impoverished Latvian student because he could not list him as multicultural. This reveals the superficial nature of Affirmative Action by demonstrating how it only works you an applicant has “the right mix of skin color, citizenship, and financial need” (Stevens, 2009). However, despite these detractors, many others see Affirmative Action as not only an example of white guilt, but a policy that can benefit the college culture for the student population overall.
An example of this benefit is what Joane Rabe describes as “unconcious Racism” (Rabe, 2001), a topic discussed in her book Equality, Affirmative Action, and Justice . She states that admitting more diverse students helps break down stereotypes for both the white students towards the minorities, and the minorities towards whites as well. Another example from Rabe is the fact that accepting people from other countries increases the profile of the college itself. By the college doing this they gain an international profile will help increase its revenue in more ways than one. This can been seen in Trinity college. Back before Affirmative Action was enacted, the international student population here was almost nonexistent. Now international students make up more than 4 percent of the total population (International Student, 2013). By having an international presence Trinity college greatly enhances the campus culture by bringing in an international culture. It also helps set up an environment where people from different nations learn to work together and come to understand each other. These policies help build international understanding in a world where international conflict is all too common. It was because of this reasoning that the group chose to let the color conscious policies have an influence on the acceptance of applicants.
Implementing these policies in any significant way however proved to be more complicated than originally thought. This was because of the stances the Supreme Court has taken on the influence Affirmative Action can have in admitting an applicant. Over the decades rules have been set by the Supreme Court so colleges do not turn color conscious policies into discriminating policies. The first instance of this was the Supreme ruling on Bakke vs. University of California (1978). This case involved Allen Blakke, a student who was reject from the university of California multiple time even though there were minorities being let in with lower scores because of a quota the school was trying to hit. The court found this unconstitutional and made it so colleges could not use quotas when admitting minority students.
Another Supreme Court case that greatly affected Affirmative Action in regards to the admissions process was Grutter vs. Bollinger (2003). This case involved a law student who could not get into the University of Michigan’s law school while minorities at a lower academic rank were getting in. She took her case to the Supreme court and while the court upheld the idea that the school could consider race a factor, the school could not use a fixed point system anymore when someone was racially diverse. These restrictions by the Supreme Court made a racially diverse class harder to attain because admissions offices now had to jump through many more legal hoops.
The tactic the group using for these applicants was to give out an applicant a ‘diversity score’. An applicant would receive a score from one to three on how “diverse” they are. Now on the surface this could be seen as conflicting with the Michigan rulings because this involves giving a “fixed score” for ethnic diversity. However an argument could be made that “diversity” is based on other factors as well. An example of this was Cliff Anderson. He was scored a three by many due to not only his race but also for the fact that he is gay. Another example was how many applicants received diversity points for attending a public school. These are examples of how the diversity scale was not solely based on someone’s race, but also on other factors about the person as well.
Overall the acceptance process should be seen as a success in terms of how the quality of the class.The college ended up requiring students of legacy, Spanish, and African American decent. Also, while all the students accepted were from private schools, the process allowed for equal opportunity education because of the students accepted. Out of the nine accepted, over half came from public schools. This shows that at least socioeconomically the playing field has evened out due to this process. Despite all of the students being from private school, the strength of the class is still high because of the diversity. While the students are well off, they have different racial background. They all have different backgrounds and as a result they each have something unique to add to the college culture overall. It is for these reasons that the college admissions group achieved their goals in all three areas at an effective level.
Bibliography:
Glazer, Nathan. Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy. New York: Basic, 1975. Print.
Infoplease. Infoplease, n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2013.
Rabe, Johan. Equality, Affirmative Action, and Justice. Hamburg: J. Rabe, 2001. Print.
Stevens, Mitchell L. Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. Print.
“Trinity College.” International Student. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2013.