Affirmative Action - Washington Post Article

[DavidEBernstein at aol.com]

One thing one should insist on in the affirmative action debate is some  
forthrightness about what's going on.  Personally, I think the fact that  the 
statistical gap among groups' performance on various entrance exams actually  
lends support to preferences for the groups that do worse, because, at least in  
the short-term, there really is no practical alternative if one wants to  
include a reasonable representation of all racial groups in the classes of  elite 
schools, other than abolishing traditional admission criteria (which may  or 
may not be a good idea, but is in many ways a more extreme solution).
 
Nevertheless, various university (including) law school officials seem to  
feel the need to deny that preferences exist in any meaningful fashion (I  can 
cite examples, but I don't think this point is controversial), that at most  
they are simply choosing between candidates who are more or less equally  
qualified.
 
Here are some actual stats, for law schools.  
 
This is from the American Lawyer, circa the debate over Proposition  209:
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-  
Total  law school applicants nationally in 1996-97 with: 
Black  Hispanic White 
LSAT of 160 (83.5 percentile) and GPA of 3.25 (a low B+ 103  224 7,715 
average) 
LSAT of 164 (92.3 percentile) and GPA of 3.50 (B+/A-  16 45 2,646 
average) 
Average for all applicants receiving offers from  Boalt for '97: 
LSAT of 169 (97.7 percentile) and 3.74 GPA (high A- average)  
Minority enrollment at for the entering class of '97: 

Black Hispanic 
Harvard Law School  49 24 
Stanford Law  School 12 19 
Yale Law School       18 15 
 
At Boalt the same year
LSAT (percentile) GPA 

Nonminorities 168 (96.9) 3.72 

Asian 166 (95.0) 3.71 

Hispanic 159 (80.5) 3.50 

Black 155 (67.0) 3.54 


The point of the American Lawyer article, which was very supportive of AA,  
is to show that if Boalt wanted to matriculate African American and (to a  
lesser degree) Hispanic students, it had no choice but to either (a) abolish  
traditional admissions criteria; or (b) use preferences.  It's hard to  argue with 
that conclusion.
 
 
>From the lower court's Grutter opinion: 
 
In the 1994 entering class (at U. Mich. Law School), white students had a  
median LSAT score of 168 and a median UGPA of 3.57, while the corresponding  
figures were 157 and 2.97 for African American students, and 162 and 3.26 for  
Mexican American students. In the 1995 entering class, white students had a  
median LSAT score of 167 and a median UGPA of 3.59, while the corresponding  
figures were 155 and 3.18 for African American students, and 159 and 3.35 for  
Mexican American students.
 
Now, anyone who looks at these statistics rationally recognizes that having  
certain types of minority status is a huge advantage in law school  
admissions, and the same is true for undergraduate admissions at elite  colleges.  And 
if certain groups have an advantage, the necessary corollary  is that other 
groups are at a disadvantage.
 
That doesn't mean that the policies are unjustified.  Indeed, as I  
mentioned, the yawning gap in test scores actually makes me more sympathetic to  such 
policies.  (Though, as I've written, I become very concerned when the  desire 
for diversity in law schools leads to policies that encourage the  
matriculation at lower ranked law schools of students who, unbenownest to them,  
statistically have a poor chance of ever passing the bar).  But one reason  that the 
proponents of AA haven't made as much headway as they might with public  opinion 
is that instead of universities being forthright about what they do and  why, 
they resort to various forms of subterfuge (e.g., claiming they are most  
concerned with "diversity" because of the important of diverse perspectives  in 
the classroom, while having liberal arts faculties whose political  views range 
from left to far left), admittedly partly a result of the  restrictions that 
Bakke put on the legally permissible justifications for  preferences.  
 
But as academics, we can and should acknowledge the reality of  the 
situation, and start from there.  Gratz may or may not have been  admitted to U. Mich. 
in the absence of preferences, but, if the claim is that  one's race shouldn't 
be a factor in admissions, I don't see how that's  either here nor there.
 
David Bernstein
Visiting Professor
Brooklyn Law School
Professor 
George Mason University 
School of Law
 
In a message dated 11/18/2006 5:34:45 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu writes:

 
Unless I'm mistaken, the  Supreme Court did find that the Univ. of Michigan's 
 undergraduate affirmative action admissions program violated Gratz's 14th  
Am. right to equal protection. Curiously, the Post story omits that point and  
leaves the reader with the contrary impression.
 
Mark S. Scarberry
Pepperdine Univ. School of  Law


 
____________________________________
From: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu on  behalf of Steven Jamar
Sent: Sat 11/18/2006 1:48 PM
To:  conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
Subject: Affirmative Action - Washington  Post Article



I  found this interesting, especially the numbers relating to actual admits 
of  whites and Asians compared to Gratz.:



To back the  contention that Gratz did not suffer because of race, the 
university points  out that 1,400 white and Asian students with lower grades or test 
scores  than hers were admitted that year, while 2,000 whites and Asians with 
higher  test scores were denied admission.



_http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/17/AR20061117016
40.html_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/17/AR2006111701640.html)   




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