As the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in two lawsuits filed against the University of Michigan for its affirmative action policies, Northwestern administrators and faculty wondered how the court’s ruling would affect college admissions and higher education.
The university has stood in support of race-based college admissions practices. And most faculty and administrators interviewed Tuesday said they favor using affirmative action — even though some law professors predicted the court will rule against Michigan’s admissions standards.
“What I think is probably likely to happen is the court will find that this particular approach taken by the University of Michigan is the kind of quota that has been barred by previous decisions,” law Prof. Stephen Presser said.
Michigan is entangled in two lawsuits brought by white students who were not admitted to the university’s undergraduate and law schools. The students claim their places were given to minority students because of the school’s affirmative action policies. The court in July will make its rulings, would could set standards for admissions at all universities — even private schools such as NU.
Michigan’s undergraduate school uses a point system in its admissions — awarding applicants points for various factors, including academic merit, socioeconomic background and race. But some have contended that the points, which give minority students a large boost, dwarf the points awarded in the other areas.
Similarly, Michigan’s law school aims to achieve a “critical mass” of underrepresented minority students, but Tuesday’s discussion raised concerns that this goal was akin to that of a quota, ruled unconstitutional by the court in 1978.
Experts expect the typically conservative and liberal judges to vote along ideological lines, so the decision likely will rest on key votes from moderate justices. Law Prof. John McGinnis said Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s vote is crucial.
“I think for (Michigan) to win, it will need her vote,” said McGinnis, adding that the opposition would need her vote to win as well.
McGinnis predicted Michigan’s policy will be struck down because it is not narrow enough — there are other ways of achieving the same goal of bringing a population of minority students to the school, he said.
On the other hand, Hollis Settles, first vice president for the Evanston/North Shore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said he does not view Michigan’s admissions policy as discriminatory and is confident the court will rule in the university’s favor.
NU practices affirmative action but without a point system, said Rebecca Dixon, associate provost for university enrollment.
“We make subjective judgments based on the entire file,” she said. “We use race as one criterion; not any one of (the criteria) is usually definitive. We are looking for a variety of skills, cultural backgrounds, geographic backgrounds, and racial and ethnic backgrounds.”
Affirmative action is important for gathering a diverse group of students, she said.
“If we just sit around and wait for students of color, the supply is not great,” she said. “We have to really work at it in an affirmative way.”
In February, NU filed a “friend of the court” brief with 29 other private universities in support of Michigan, stating NU supports affirmative action because students who are being prepared to live and work in a “highly diverse, multicultural society” should interact with those from different backgrounds.
Sociology Prof. Mary Pattillo said she has seen the importance of diverse backgrounds firsthand in her classroom.
“I know as a professor that what makes class interesting is that people bring so many things to the classroom,” she said. “Class would be totally boring if everyone was middle- to upper-middle class, suburban, went to the best high schools. We’d all be talking to each other and not learning anything.”
Pattillo also said universities need to remember the continuing depths of racial discrimination when making admissions decisions.
“In just about every measure of well-being, African Americans and Latinos do worse than whites,” she said, citing factors such as family income, wealth and housing quality. “We need to take into account those disadvantages when students are applying to colleges.”
Other professors said affirmative action is necessary to accomplish the goal of moving toward a more diverse student body.
African-American studies Prof. Martha Biondi said the number of minority students in California’s public university graduate schools dropped by half after they had to stop using an affirmative action-based quota system.
“I think (affirmative action) has been an extremely important policy and program for moving beyond centuries of discrimination,” she said.
History Prof. Dylan Penningroth said top universities such as NU can attribute shining reputations to decades of affirmative action.
“Part of the reason they are so good is they opened the student body to a wide range of people,” said Penningroth, noting how schools have reached out to women, Jews and working-class men throughout history.
But McGinnis said he doesn’t think the goal of diversity is a valid reason to support affirmative action if the same policies don’t extend to faculty.
“If they are going to be really concerned about having different viewpoints, many (schools) need to look in the mirror and see if they have different viewpoints on their faculties,” McGinnis said. “Faculties are monolithically left liberal.”
McGinnis said affirmative action in the form of encouragement for minorities and education about their opportunities is a good thing, but he “tends to be concerned about it if it causes preferential treatment.”
Presser, from the Law School, said he believes Michigan’s policy is “flat-out wrong,” but added that helping qualified minorities in low-income communities achieve their potential should be permissible.
Some supporters cited reasons other than diversity to back Michigan’s system.
Penningroth said universities need ways to make admissions decisions between equally qualified candidates, such as when hundreds of students have the same high SAT scores.
Pattillo said although point systems like Michigan’s may seem to be oversimplified, such a large university cannot afford to give as much individual attention to each applicant as NU does.
“At a smaller school, an admissions officer can take more into account,” she said. “Some people might like that idea better because it’s really taking a student as a full person. At Michigan, they have to come up with a shorthand, and points are one kind of a shorthand.”
Regardless of the arguments for and against Michigan’s point system, Pattillo said it is far too soon to forgo affirmative action completely.
“Affirmative action was conceived as a temporary effort to move toward not needing it,” she said. “We’re definitely not there yet; we’re definitely not done. I don’t see how anyone can think we’re there yet.”
The Daily’s Dalia Naamani-Goldman contributed to this report.
