Minority Enrollment Drops Semester After High Court Ruling
By Nzingha Thompson-Bahauddeen, Special to BET.com
Posted February 10, 2004 – Seven months ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy, supporters feared that there would be a major decrease in minority students.
Those fears became true this fall.
University of Michigan records show that the number of Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans applying for admission at the beginning of this school year, is 23 percent less than the number who applied last year.
Dr. Robert Ethridge, former head of the American Association for Affirmative Action, says that the low numbers suggest that students of color are “reacting to the decision at the undergraduate level,” and are probably heading to other institutions they feel are more welcoming.
“Individuals become gun-shy, and rather than taking a chance, they apply somewhere else,” said Ethridge, vice president for Equal Opportunity Programs at Emory University in Atlanta. “Undergrad-level minorities students may say, ‘I am not going to be as competitive based on competition.’”
University officials say it is still early, and thousands of more applicants will be reviewed in a procedure that will end in early April. Feb. 1 was the application deadline.
So far, the total number of applicants admitted, is about 8,600; this is down 1 percent, from last year. The university says it will likely accept 12,000 to 13,000 applicants.
The Bush administration drew wide criticism last year when it filed a friend-of-the-court brief denouncing the university’s affirmative action policy on Martin Luther King’s birthday. The policy amounted to no more than a quota, the administration contended. The university had said the policy was necessary to acquire a “critical mass” of minority students.
Roughly five months later, the U.S. Supreme court ruled that Michigan’s undergraduate affirmative action program was unconstitutional because the policy gave applicants a certain amount of points based on race. But, in a blow to the Bush administration, the Supreme Court upheld the law school’s right to use race as a criterion in admissions, saying that the application was more vague.
The new University of Michigan undergraduate application does not award points based on race and added a short answer, and an optional essay section. The applications were not available until a month later, due to the changes.
Admissions Director Ted Spencer suggested that, because of the controversy over the affirmative action policy, minority applicants might be uncomfortable with the environment at the University.
“The residual kinds of impact of all this discussion and dialogue, particularly from the other side of this issue, that diversity is bad, it makes a lot of students think, ‘Well maybe I don’t want to be put into that sort of environment,’” Spencer told The Associated Press.