AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
If you were serving on the Supreme Court, how would you have
decided the University of Michigan affi rmative action cases? In
the undergraduate case, Jennifer Gratz had a high school GPA
of 3.76 and an ACT score of 25 (eighty-third percentile), and Pat-
rick Hamacher had a GPA of 3.37 and an ACT of 28 (eighty-ninth
percentile), but they were denied admission to Michigan. The
student in the law school case, Barbara Grutter, was a forty-
three-year-old returning student who had an undergraduate
GPA of 3.81 at Michigan State University and a 161 on the LSAT.
All three students showed that they had higher scores than
some of the minority students who were admitted under the
university’s affi rmative action program. The legal question that
the Court had to decide was whether the university’s affi rma-
tive action program violated the equal protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment and civil rights laws barring discrimi-
nation on the basis of race, or if the program could be justifi ed
as serving a “compelling state interest” under the strict scru-
tiny standard.
The crucial point of contention in the debate over the use
of race in college admissions decisions is “viewpoint diversity”;
the claimed advantage of affi rmative action is the diversity that
it brings to classroom discussions. Advocates of affi rmative
action argue that viewpoint diversity is essential to learning and
that having racial diversity in the student body is likely to pro-
duce more viewpoint diversity than having an all-white student
body. Furthermore, proponents argue, the courts are not the
proper place to decide these issues. Instead, as with the com-
plex and highly charged topic of racial redistricting, the politi-
cal branches of government are where these decisions should
be made. Advocates also make a very pragmatic argument that
getting rid of affi rmative action would almost certainly lead to a
system that is less rooted in merit-based admissions than the
current system. This is because states that get rid of race as a
factor in admissions often adopt a “10 percent solution,” which
says that the top 10 percent of any graduating high school class
can be admitted to the state university. This means that a stu-
dent who may be in the top 20 percent of an excellent school
might not be admitted even if she had better test scores and
grades than a student who was in the top 10 percent of a high
school that was not as good.
Opponents reply that supporters of affi rmative action
have not provided convincing evidence that racial diversity in
colleges has any benefi cial effects. They also argue that “view-
point diversity” arguments assume that members of all racial
minorities think alike, drawing a comparison to racial profi l-
ing in law enforcement. It is just as offensive, they say, that an
admissions committee thinks that one black student has the
You Decide
same views as another black student as it is that a police offi -
cer may pull over a black teenage male just because he fi ts a
certain criminal profi le. Opponents also argue that affi rmative
action amounts to “reverse discrimination” and that any racial
classifi cation is harmful.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an affi rmative action
case from Texas in the 2012–13 term. Many are predicting that
the Court will endorse a more color-blind approach to college
admissions than is allowed by the Michigan precedent.In 2003, when the University of Michigan affi rmative action cases
were heard by the Supreme Court, some students demonstrated to
show their support for the university’s admissions process. Others
protested that it was unfair to white students.CONTINUING AND FUTURE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUES| 417Critical Thinking Questions
- To what extent should race be used as a “plus fac-
tor” to promote racial diversity and viewpoint
diversity, if at all? - Think of your own experiences in high school
and college. Has racial diversity contributed to
viewpoint diversity?