Affirmative Action - "Preferences"

Sat Nov 18 16:06:23 PST 2006

as one who has served on many admissions committees, I have to take  
exception to the argument that "numbers alone" will tell "who's  
qualified" and who isn't, *pace* the debate over Richard Sanders'  
article.

And one thing that keeps getting missed in these discussions of  
"preference" is the preferences the other way that remain  
unspoken/unarticulated:  We tend to identify with people "like us" and  
that includes students/applicants with whom we can empathize,  identify  
or don't have to work hard to understand. That leads to  a preference  
that may need "correction" if we  are to reach reasonable, fair  
results.   I think it is of utmost importance to have *some* form of  
"affirmative action" tapping me on the shoulder to remind me that not  
all applicants come from the advantages I had.

  IF  I am ignorant of the strong programs with rigorous grading at some  
college or school "I've never heard of", that's my problem, not the  
applicant's. It's my job to find out if I can--and not just by looking  
for the mean LSAT from that school.  I need to know about the  
department, the major, etc.   If I am ignorant of what the correlation  
between a particular LSAT and *bar exam* success is, or SAT and  
undergraduate performance is, it is my job to find out, not to make  
claims about advantaging the "unqualified."  UPGA is a better predictor  
of performance than LSAT; but at some point, LSAT predicts  overall  
success.   That changes with the changes in LSAT format.  I had  
classmates with 800 LSATs who didn't do very well;  I know former  
Supreme Court clerks who had "low" LSATs.  Other  things matter, not  
just numerical metrics or people "like us."

Finally, we get back to the zero-sum game problem.  Ms. Gratz was not  
denied a college education, she was denied at the "prestigious" school.  
  Many, many people go on to great success from "lesser" colleges, as I  
tried to point out a while ago.  (Ms. Grutter may have had a stronger  
claim since at the time, Michigan had only one public law school, but  
now it has two)

Respectfully,
Lynne Henderson

On Nov 18, 2006, at 3:07 PM, DavidEBernstein at aol.com wrote:

>
> 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/ 
>> AR2006111701640.html  _______________________________________________
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