'U' legal counsel discusses lawsuits

More than 300 students and faculty members crammed into Hale Auditorium yesterday to hear Liz Barry, interim co-general council for the University, speak about the two lawsuits challenging the University's use of race in the admissions process.

Barry began the panel discussion by giving a synopsis of the legal history of affirmative action and defending the University's admissions policies.

"Our practices do conform to the precedent set by (the Bakke v. the University of California at Davis) case," said Barry in regard to Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell's opinion in Bakke, which stated that race could be used as one of many factors in the admissions process. "Every student we admit, we believe, will benefit from a Michigan education and offer the community something as well."

ALLISON CANTOR/Daily Law Dean Jeffrey Lehman speaks yesterday during a panel on the two lawsuits targeting University admissions.

In October, the Center for Individual Rights, a non-profit legal organization, filed the first lawsuit against the University's College of Literature, Science and Arts, and the second against the Law School in December, claiming in both that the University had discriminated against their white clients on the basis of their race.

Provost Nancy Cantor, Law Dean Jeffrey Lehman and Business Dean B. Joseph White joined Barry to discuss the lawsuits and reaffirm the University's commitment to diversity.

Barry said she welcomed the Citizens for Affirmative Action's Preservation's motion last week to intervene in the lawsuit against LSA. CAAP is a newly formed coalition of lawyers, national organizations and high school students.

"We recently received a motion to intervene and we will be filing our response to that motion sometime soon," Barry said. "The intervention is supportive to what we're doing in our program so we welcome it."

In an attempt to prove to the crowd that the University's admissions policies are within the parameters of the Bakke verdict, Barry explained the admissions policies of both LSA and the Law School. She said the University has not used separate admissions committees for minority students when reviewing applications, as the University of California at Davis Medical School did, which served as a deciding factors in the Bakke case.

"We look at our applications on an individual basis," said Barry, referring to the LSA admissions process. "About one-third are accepted or rejected outright. The rest are reviewed on an individual basis."

Barry said CIR is not interested in the details of how race is used in the admissions process, but rather hopes to dismantle affirmative action altogether, as it did in the Fifth Circuit with Hopwood v. the state of Texas, which invalidated the use of affirmative action for college admissions in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.

"We get in this debate in talking about specifics," Barry said. "Our opponents do not want race to be considered at all. Their rhetoric is about meritocracy. This isn't a debate about one point or two points or three points."

Lehman congratulated the University community for sustaining an open dialogue about the two lawsuits, even though the suits have the potential to divide the campus.

"I have seen from my experience as a lawyer that litigation can be divisive," Lehman said. "I'm very happy the lawsuit has not brought conversation to halt. In fact, it's done the opposite."

Cantor focused on the University's century-old commitment to achieving diversity and assured audience members that the lawsuits would not change this focus.

"We can't turn away from our history. Lawsuits will come and go, but the legacy won't," Cantor said. "We would be doing the institution a disservice if we did not recruit, retain and graduate a diverse student body."

Cantor said she and University President Lee Bollinger will sponsor a series of town meetings to keep the students informed about issues relating to diversity and the lawsuits.

Albert Garcia, LSA Student Government Academic Affairs chair, said he hoped more students could be informed about the lawsuits.

"I really want to see a theme semester for diversity," Garcia said. "Students need to know that these administrators are taking time to sit down and talk to students."

Business first-year student Quay Brown said he learned a great deal from the speakers.

"It brought to light a lot of the issues," Brown said. "The information on the cases was most valuable."

02-11-98