For more background information on these cases click here!

The recent Supreme Court ruling on the Michigan affirmative action cases establishes that admissions programs may include race as one among several factors in the admissions process, provided that the application of race-based criteria is “narrowly tailored.” The Supreme Court, thus, considers that race and ethnicity are important and relevant factors in higher education. In response to questions raised in the Latino community, ¿Qué Pasa, OSU? discussed the implications of the rulings with several campus administrators. In this article, we included the responses from Dr. Martha Garland, Vice Provost and Dean of the Office of Undergraduate Studies; Dr. Mabel Freeman Assistant Vice President of Undergraduate Admissions and First Year Experience; Dr. Mac Stewart, Vice Provost of Minority Affairs and Mrs. Natala Hart, Director of Student Financial Aid.

Affirmative Action is a government program that seeks to overcome the effects of inequality and discrimination by providing jobs and opportunities for members of minority groups. The program goes back to the 1960’s when President Kennedy and President Johnson enacted laws to: “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed ... without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin.” (Kennedy’s Executive Order No. 10925). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 “prohibits race discrimination in education.” Recent legal and political action have challenged the constitutionality of affirmative action, including California’s Proposition 209, which bans “preferential treatment” based on color, origin, sex or ethnicity. This year, the Supreme Court in the University of Michigan case decided that race can be considered in admissions, but it should not be used in a point system, such as the one implemented by the University of Michigan to admit undergraduate students.

Ohio State’s Diversity Agenda will not be changed. If recruitment strategies or support programs have to be adjusted because of the law, these will be made. However, the commitment to support Latin@ students to enter, study and graduate at the Ohio State remains intact. In general, the Supreme Court’s decision has reaffirmed the importance of considering race and ethnicity as relevant factors in the admission process. Ohio State has to make sure that the criteria are “narrowly tailored” to the purpose; i.e., race is used as only one of many factors in the application process. It is important that each applicant be considered individually, and that a system of racial quotas is avoided.
How are different offices at Ohio State responding to the Michigan ruling:

Members of the Latino community want to know how Ohio State is responding to the Supreme Court rulings. We asked campus administrators to tell us how the rulings will impact their offices and programs, especially in regards to Latin@ students.

Dr. Martha Garland
Vice Provost and Dean of Undergraduate Studies

Ohio State remains profoundly committed to diversity and to being a warm and welcoming community for people from all backgrounds. The Supreme Court decision about undergraduate admissions requires us to make some changes in our admissions selection process. At this point, we can’t be certain exactly how the new methods will work, but we will be carefully monitoring and adjusting our strategies so that we can continue to recruit a widely diverse student body.

Obviously, we need to operate within the law as it is newly articulated, and to be certain that we are doing so we will examine a whole range of programs. However, we strongly believe that we are fully justified in providing supportive opportunities to our students, especially as we seek to maintain educational access. We will protect our programs that help us with this commitment, even while we may adjust some of their features to make them more inclusive.

The University’s commitment remains as strong as ever. If some of our “tools”--recruitment processes, support programs-- need to be adjusted to conform to the law, we will make those adjustments. But we continue to believe that this is a good place for Latin@ students, and we will do everything possible to help them come here, stay here, succeed, and graduate. In an interesting way, the challenge of the Michigan case and the Supreme Court decision has had an energizing effect on higher education and on people committed to diversity. I think as an institution we are in some ways more excited than ever about helping our University to be a real model of “BIENVENID@S.”

Dr. Mabel G. Freeman
Assistant Vice President
Undergraduate Admissions and First Year Experience

We were extremely pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the university’s right to consider race and ethnicity in the admissions decision process. Ohio State will continue to value racial diversity as important to the strength of our university. The Court’s expectation that the process be narrowly tailored has resulted in our making some adjustments to our admissions process to allow for a more individualized review of our applications. We will no longer be able to automatically assign a value or points to an application just because an applicant is a minority student. We will be reading the applications looking for both academic strengths and the student’s ability to contribute to the educational diversity of our institution. Educational diversity refers to factors such as: socioeconomic, first-generation, racial, ethnic, cultural, special talents, academic interests, geography, gender, or age, for example. We are very hopeful that this adjusted process will also benefit the university by continuing to attract and enroll a diverse group of students.
Our goals continue to be to enroll the strongest group of students who will be able to succeed and graduate from Ohio State and contribute to the educational diversity of the university. We continue to seek especially those students who rank in the top 25% of their high school classes and have preferably tested on the ACT or SAT at a level commensurate with the previous year’s freshman class. Ohio State will always enroll the majority of our students from Ohio, but we continue to enroll increasing numbers of students from around the country and internationally.

Ohio State University has a history of being committed to enrolling Latin@ students and supporting their needs and success. That will continue. I believe the university is stronger than it has ever been, and the climate for Latin@ students is a very good one. The university opportunities in the classroom, internships, co-op experiences, study abroad, undergraduate research, community service, leadership development - all of these are wonderful reasons why Latin@s and others should be considering Ohio State for their education.
Cont’d on next page

Mrs. Natala Hart
Director of The Office of Student Financial Aid

For the most part, the Michigan case will not impact student financial aid because the vast majority of aid is based on financial need. The areas where review will take place this year are scholarships based solely on merit and those for which a particular ethnicity is a requirement.

In the interim, our commitment to provide students’ aid remains at the highest level. We will continue to provide aid to meet our diversity and academic goals.

Dr. Mac Stewart
Vice Provost for Minority Affairs

As a first general comment it is important to note that Ohio State’s commitment to fostering a diverse academic dialogue within our community has not changed – at least, certainly not diminished. The Supreme Court decisions confirmed that we have been considering the right kinds of issues in admissions decisions and in programs for our enrolled undergraduates. Dr. Holbrook has repeatedly affirmed the University’s continuing commitments to this dialogue, and we in the Office of Minority Affairs applaud her for her forthright stand both before and since the June announcement of the Court’s decisions.

To be sure that we meet the spirit and the letter of the law, we have increased ongoing efforts to review all our programs. The mission of the Office of Minority Affairs remains unchanged, but we want to be sure that operationally all programs meet the inclusiveness expected by the Court. This is true of all University programs in recruitment and retention, and modifications will be made if needed.

Changes in our efforts to recruit and retain minorities seem to me to be motivated more by the University’s own objectives for an increasingly well-credentialed entering class than by the June rulings. Every year, as admission to Ohio State has become more competitive, we have increased OMA efforts and sharpened our focus on attracting high ability students to Columbus. For example, in October I was part of an OSU delegation to Puerto Rico where we met with many able and interested Latin@ students, hoping to bring the best of them to our campus. As I write, last evening I met with 32 able Latin@ students from Texas whom we were hosting as recruits to OSU. And three days from now more than 220 visiting minority students will be here to meet faculty and explore opportunities at our graduate and professional schools. This will be the thirty-third year for this specific program, and each year we work harder and, I hope, more effectively to attract students of an increasingly competitive quality.

Data from The Office of The University Registrar Reports, reports are available online at www.ureg.ohio-state.edu/ourweb/srs/

Background information on the Michigan cases:

On June 23, 2003, the United States Supreme Court handed down rulings on two affirmative action lawsuits filed against the University of Michigan. Both lawsuits challenged the university’s use of race in its admissions policies. The Court upheld Michigan’s admissions policies in the case involving the Law School, but found Michigan’s undergraduate admissions practices unconstitutional. These rulings are viewed as a victory for supporters of affirmative action because the courts, in both cases, upheld the importance of diversity in higher education. In addition, the Court upheld race as one of several factors that can be taken into account in trying to achieve a diverse student body.

Yet, opponents of affirmative action also view the rulings as a partial victory. Through its decisions, the Court laid out clear requirements restricting the ways that considerations of race can be applied. While the Court’s decisions were meant to clarify the law regarding affirmative action, many questions remain regarding what is constitutional and what is not. Some background on the Michigan lawsuits may help shed light on the status of affirmative action today.

What were the cases that were filed against Michigan?

In 1995, Jennifer Gratz, a White undergraduate applicant to the University of Michigan, was denied admission. Patrick Hamacher, also a White applicant, was denied admission in 1997. Represented by the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), both applicants filed a lawsuit (Gratz v. Bollinger) against the University of Michigan in October 1997. They charged that the University unlawfully discriminated against them by taking race into account as one of several factors in the admissions process.

A few months later, in December 1997, Barbara Grutter, an unsuccessful applicant to Michigan’s Law School filed a suit challenging the University’s use of race in its Law School admissions process (Grutter v. Bollinger).

Both suits were filed as class actions in federal district court. This means that the plaintiffs sought a decision that did not apply only to themselves, but rather to all others sharing the same legal problem. They also sought monetary damages and injunctions suspending Michigan’s consideration of race in the admissions process. Student and citizen groups, including the Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund, joined the suit as full parties to defend Michigan’s policies.

What was Michigan’s defense?

The University of Michigan argued that the Supreme Court’s 1978 ruling in the Bakke case justified the consideration of race in university admissions. That case established that the educational benefits of a racially diverse student body are a “compelling governmental interest” and, therefore, justify the use of race in admissions.

How did the courts rule?

In the Gratz case, the District Court upheld Michigan’s current undergraduate admissions policy in 2000, but ruled that its 1995-1998 policies were unconstitutional. In the case against the Law School, however, the use of race was declared unconstitutional.

Both cases were appealed, and the decision against the Law School was reversed. The Center for Individual Rights, then, asked the Supreme Court to review the Grutter case. Both parties in the Gratz case asked the Supreme Court to review their case
before the appellate court handed down a ruling.

Early this summer, the Supreme Court ruled in the Grutter case that diversity is a compelling interest and that race is one of a number of factors that can be considered in order to get the educational benefits of a diverse student body. The Law School’s admissions process was declared constitutional because each applicant was treated individually. The Court found Michigan’s undergraduate admission policy unconstitutional because it awarded points for minority status and, therefore, was not “narrowly tailored” to serve the interest of educational benefits of all students. In addition, the Court requires that admissions policies be reviewed regularly to ensure that they are narrowly tailored.

What is on the horizon?

Now, policy makers in all spheres of higher education are examining their own practices to ensure that they comply with the court requirements. Yet, because the criteria justifying the use of race are so fuzzy and subjective, it is certain that the struggle over affirmative action is far from over. For instance, it is not clear at what point racial considerations to achieve educational benefits of diversity actually become a quota. Institutions are required to review their programs regularly to ensure that they are “narrowly tailored” to the “compelling state interest”; but the courts do not provide precise, objective rules for making that determination, nor can we insulate “compelling interest” from political pressures. If affirmative action opponents take heed, Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion in the Grutter case offers clear prescriptions for their course of action. Scalia identifies specific strategies for challenging affirmative action policies and points to “tempting targets” for further suits, including, “minority-only student organizations, separate minority housing opportunities, separate minority student centers…”.

On the other hand, the decision from the Michigan Supreme Court has reaffirmed the importance of considering race and ethnicity as relevant factors in admissions. As long as these criteria, among the many factors considered in the application process, are considered individually for each applicant and quotas are avoided by finding ways for considering race and ethnicity in the process of admissions, affirmative action will continue to guarantee diversity in higher education.