On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard the first oral arguments for and against the University of Michigan’s affirmative action program. Through this program, the University of Michigan is fulfilling its educational responsibility to promote diversity, racial or otherwise, in the student body. The Supreme Court must allow the university to continue enhancing the academic environment it provides.
The educational experience of meeting people of different backgrounds and different viewpoints is invaluable. Students attending college today will graduate into a globalized workforce that will necessitate them being exposed to viewpoints other than their own. The existence of racial diversity expands students’ understanding. Meeting new people forces students to reexamine stereotypes and assumptions that may hinder success.
Some have suggested that there are other, “race-neutral” ways to achieve diversity. A Texas plan, which has since been implemented in Florida and California, provides guaranteed admission to the top-10 percent of each high school’s graduating class. Because high schools tend to be segregated by race and socioeconomic class, this plan approximates the racial diversity provided by affirmative action. However, this plan is dependent on continued segregation of high schools. Diversity is not only important at the level of higher education: Making early homogeneity the basis for later diversity is absurd.
In addition, the Texas plan denies the importance of individual selection in the admissions process. The University of Michigan, like most universities, looks at the whole individual when evaluating an applicant. Applicants should not be accepted based merely on a GPA or class rank: personality traits, interests and views should matter. Undoubtedly, race is an integral part of how an individual views the world. Those of different backgrounds have different contributions to make to a class. Completely ignoring race in the admissions process is na?ve.
Michigan accounts for race by assigning a certain number of points to minorities and the underprivileged. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit have alleged that this point system violates the Supreme Court’s 1978 Regents of University of California v. Bakke decision, which bans specific, numeric goals for racial proportions. The decision forbids specific racial quotas in admissions, but allows universities to promote racial diversity in the student body.
However, the University assigns points to all aspects of a student’s application, not just race. Each year, the University of Michigan’s School of Literature, Science and the Arts has approximately 13,000 applicants for less than 4,000 spots. The point system is simply an organizational tool used to expedite the evaluation of such a large number of applicants, hardly analogous to a racial quota.
Ultimately, the University of Michigan has created an effective policy to increase diversity in its student body. There is ample evidence for the importance of diversity in the educational process. A decision against the University of Michigan would be detrimental to the educational goals of universities throughout the country.
