Defending What's Right?

by Nicole Giannone

Imagine having straight A's, a 1500 on the SATs, community service contributions, involvement in many extra curricular activities, and applying to the college you've dreamed about attending, only to find out that you have been rejected because of the color of your skin. On the other hand, how can opportunity be provided where none, or little has previously existed, if not by establishing a method of achieving diversity? These issues are under common consideration these days at the top colleges and universities in the United States in an effort to create diversity, making the college admissions process a hotbed of controversy as well as a political issue that is affecting people both positively and negatively.

Right now, there is a court appeal going on between The Center for Individual Rights and its target, the University of Michigan on the basis of determining whether or not the University of Michigan's admissions process is complying within constitutional boundaries. The case "challenges the University's use of race in its admissions process to its undergraduate college, the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. The main complainant is Jennifer Gratz, an unsuccessful applicant for the 1997 Fall Term. Gratz contends that the reason why she wasn't admitted was based on reverse discrimination.

While the use of affirmative action to create racial diversity has been accepted as a school admittance and workplace employment policy for a while, The Center for Individual Rights, a public interest legal and educational institute that defends against the unconstitutional exercise of state power, is arguing that the University of Michigan has deliberately used race as a perverse form of admissions to their University. The case, Gratz v. Bollinger (Lee Bollinger is the President of the University of Michigan), may very well serve as a new cornerstone in how colleges/universities decide on their applicants for admissions.

Currently, when applying to the University of Michigan and many other schools in the country, students get automatically categorized into a certain type of applicant: athletes are given twenty points as are minorities. Twenty additional points can make a big difference in a point system that offers a maximum of 150 points on anyone's transcript. To the Caucasian students being represented by the Center for Individual Rights, this has been causing somewhat of a problem.