Verdict may demand new admissions

By Jane Krull

Daily Staff Reporter

Across the nation, universities have felt the effects of bans on affirmative action resulting from court cases or voter will. With the University Law School admissions system under scrutiny, other systems born from the bans on race as a factor may provide the basis for a new system.

The University plans to begin defending the Law School's admissions system in court Jan. 16 against the Washington D.C.-based Center for Individual Rights, which sued the University more than three years ago on behalf of a white applicant who claims she was unfairly denied admission because of her race.

In December, U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan upheld the University's use of race as a factor in undergraduate admissions without a trial, but U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedmann decided to proceed with the trial in the case challenging the Law School.

If Friedmann rules against the University, systems such as those in place in schools in Texas, California and Washington could be used as examples of systems changed to eliminate race from admissions.

After Proposition 209 ended the use of race as a factor in the California system, minority enrollment in the University of California system dropped from 36.5 percent in 1996 to 28.6 percent in 2000.

University of California at Los Angeles Law School Prof. Kenneth Karsh said that the effects of Proposition 209 on the law school was "absolutely disastrous."

Karsh said that minority students accepted into the entering class are less likely to come to the law school based on the perception of an undesirable atmosphere.

"It is understandable for them to be afraid to come here if, for example, they were to be with just a few other African Americans in their entering class," Karsh said.

Despite the March 1996 U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Hopwood v. State of Texas to stop the use of affirmative action at the University of Texas at Austin, the university's law school has still been trying to attract minority students, said Shelli Soto, dean for admissions at the university's law school.

"We've been working the past few years since Hopwood to develop programs and initiatives, that are within our legal constraints, that move toward achieving diversity," Soto said.

These programs and initiatives include pre-law institutes at schools that have a high minority enrollment like University of Texas at El Paso and alumni scholarships aimed at minority students.

A voter-passed initiative in Washington restricted public institutions, including the University of Washington, from using race as a factor in 1998.

University of Washington Law School Associate Dean Richard Kemmert said the 1998 initiative and others like it hurts public schools in that they loose intelligent and diverse students to private colleges that use affirmative action.

"Before, we were able to admit quite qualified minority students that maybe wouldn't have stacked up numerically to white students, but now that has been completely eliminated," Kemmert said.

But some schools tend to be vague in how race is incorporated into the admissions system.

Yale University, ranked No. 1 in the nation by U.S. News and World Report in 1999, has a 30.6 percent minority enrollment and still uses race as a factor in admissions, said Director of Admissions Jean Webb.

"We do consider race as one factor in our admissions process," Webb said. "It gives us the freedom to choose the best students for our law school."

Each applicant to Yale Law School has to go through a process of "reads": The dean or director of admissions reads an application first and then two or three faculty members also read the application. Any reader at any stage in the process can include the applicant's race as a factor in his or her decision, Webb said.