While the nation’s attention has recently been occupied with the demise of the space shuttle Columbia and an ongoing march towards war with Iraq, students, faculty and administrators at universities and colleges across the country have been awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision later this year on the constitutional viability of race-conscious admissions.
Because racial justice and civil rights are integral to Oberlin College’s history and identity, the case is considered especially significant on campus. Like few, the case telescopes from the arena of national debate to the sometimes-cloistered environment of private colleges like Oberlin.
Often referred to as though they were one, the two cases in question are Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger. Both plaintiffs, who are white, claim that they were unfairly treated because African American and Hispanic applicants with similar or lesser academic records were given preference over them through a points-based system that awards higher scores to students in disadvantaged positions. The university, meanwhile, insists that its programs are constitutionally tenable and that they are crucial to fostering a diverse campus.
The Michigan case is regarded as the most important affirmative action case since the Bakke suit of 1978, in which the court struck down racial quotas while maintaining that race could still be used in admissions practices.
Earlier this year, President Bush caused a stir by bluntly assailing the programs as quota systems. Under his direction, the Justice Department has filed briefs urging the court to strike down the programs as unconstitutional.
“Because the Bush administration will file a brief against the Michigan system, but not against affirmative action itself, and there will be briefs in support of Michigan type policies at the government’s military academies, there is a chance, perhaps a good chance, that the Michigan policies will be declared constitutional,” Professor of Politics and Constitutional Law Ronald C. Kahn explained. “It is difficult to argue that children of alumni can be given an edge up in admissions but not African-Americans.”
The highly contentious and closely watched case has indeed elicited briefs from a wide variety of sectors. A coalition of Ivy League schools led by Harvard University has signed briefs supporting Michigan’s policies as have a number of large corporations including 3M, Microsoft, Bank One, Steelcase and PepsiCo.
Oberlin is part of an influential group of selective liberal arts colleges that have filed a brief supporting Michigan’s policies through the law firm Proskauer Rose. The schools in this group, Bowdoin, Bates, Swarthmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Williams, Amherst, Pomona, Carleton, Vassar, Wesleyan and several others, share like institutional characteristics and similar commitments to diversity.
“One of the arguments that the chief lawyer on this brief makes,” College president Nancy Dye told Review editors, “comes directly from Oberlin. He makes the point that Oberlin is the one school in the whole group that has educated African American students from all of the period since the 1830s. Most schools began to focus on the importance of diversity in the 1970s.”
Bush’s lawyers are not seeking to alter the 1978 decision. He has maintained, however, that better, fairer means of promoting diversity are available, citing the University of Texas’ practice of offering admission to all high school students ranked in the top ten percent of their classes. This practice bolstered in its resolve by the publicized support of Condoleezza Rice, one of the president’s most prominent African American advisors, could achieve similar effects without resorting to unconstitutional quotas.
The president’s statements were met by a strong critique from prominent Democrats. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), a declared candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, told The Washington Post that Bush’s decision was “wrong ... deceptive and ... divisive.” After White House lawyers filed the brief, Rev. Jesse Jackson called Bush “the most anti-civil rights president in 50 years” while Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) vowed, during an appearance at Al Sharpton’s Harlem headquarters that she too would fight the President in the Michigan case.
Many supporters and opponents of race-conscious admissions alike have criticized the practice favored by the administration however. On Feb. 2, The New York Times reported that the practice in Texas admissions had disproportionately benefited Asian Americans, a typically less disadvantaged minority suggested the Times, at the expense of Hispanics and African Americans: “Thus, almost one in five freshmen at the university’s flagship school [in Austin] is Asian, in a state where only about three of 100 residents are.”
Because the University of Texas’ policies rest on logic requiring heavily segregated school districts many have found them in poor taste, certainly untenable in more demographically mixed parts of the country.
For most institutions, it remains unclear what a decision against race-conscious admissions might mean. Most small private colleges were not affected by the Bakke decision, but a ruling strictly against affirmative action would put institutions like Oberlin at risk of loosing critical federal funding such as financial aid and research grants.
Dye told the Review that “the line between public and private in higher education is not very significant,” suggesting that a decision against affirmative action, overall, “would be a very serious setback for colleges like this one.”
Many are hopeful that if the Court rules against Michigan, it will strike down only that school’s particular policies, while maintaining that race can be an appropriate factor in certain instances. This scenario would be the least impacting for institutions like Oberlin.
Oberlin’s Dean of Admissions, Debra J. Chermonte, outlined the College’s practices. “We have no quotas and no targets as they apply to groups, only enrollment or class size objectives,” she said. “We’ve never had quotas. We’ve been practicing affirmative action for almost 170 years.”
“Our process,” added Associate Director of Admissions Joshua Bergey “is individualized and flexible, so there would never be a summation of numbers to decide an admission. Moreover, the process treats a student’s background as organic, all the pieces are important. We build our community one person at a time.”
In anticipation of the Michigan decision, Dye dedicated her regular column in the winter issue of the quarterly Alumni Magazine to discuss the history of diversity and affirmative action at Oberlin.
“As early as the 1830s,” she wrote, “Oberlin had discovered that bringing together students with different backgrounds and experiences brought about learning and positive social change.”
She noted the telling figure that “throughout the 19th century, Oberlin granted fully one-half of all baccalaureate degrees awarded to African Americans.”
Dye’s conclusion asserted, “Oberlin must continue to lead the way in speaking out in favor of affirmative action and the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity that it helps ensure throughout higher education.”