Race-conscious admission policy was the topic of a student-organized panel discussion, which took place from noon to 1 p.m. yesterday in the Moritz College of Law main auditorium.
The panel’s discussion centered around the controversy raised by the two pending affirmative action facing the U.S. Supreme Court. In both the Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger court cases, the plaintiffs are claiming they were unfairly denied acceptance into Michigan’s Law School.
The students filing against Michigan felt they were unfairly kept out of the college, when minorities with comparable test scores and grades were guaranteed a spot. All panelists supported the University of Michigan’s stance.
The panel included Martha Chamallas, an OSU law professor who teaches tort law, employment discrimination and feminist legal theory; John Powell, the executive director of OSU’s Institute for Race and Ethnicity in the Americas and Louis Jacobs, a former attorney general for Ohio.
“The issue of merit is going to be the biggest obstacle for people to come to terms with,” Jacobs said. “The question, ‘How did they get in when I had higher scores?” will be very difficult to overcome.”
Diversity is a major issue at college campuses across the country, and this case will have a significant impact on how those colleges achieve diversity, Chamallas said.
“To understand what diversity means, you must first realize the racial hierarchy that exists in this country,” Powell said.
Quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s concept of a twin evil, Powell said, “The idea that minorities are inferior and that whites are superior is something this country has been dealing with and will continue to deal with for generations.”
This socially ingrained prejudice is a key why affirmative action is such a heated issue.
Citing a brief produced by sociological experts, Chamallas said that based on the populations of communities and enrollment in schools, America is becoming more segregated.
“The university or the military is the first true experience many young people have to interact with people from different backgrounds,” Chamallas said.
With minorities consistently scoring lower on standardized tests and having lower GPAs, the key to leveling the playing field is still hidden.
“Fewer resources, less funding, inexperienced faculty and other factors present in predominantly minority schools contribute to the disparity in scores,” Chamallas said.
She said these tests and scores simply illustrate the level of direction and learned skills and not the person’s true intelligence nor their potential.
