University ends admission by race
As a result of a March 18 federal court decision, Rice has been prompted to suspend race-based affirmative action in admission policies.
The decision, given by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, prohibits the use of race as a factor in admission policies for colleges and universities in the circuit who receive federal funding under Title VI.
Not only is Rice in the circuit, which includes Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, but the university also accepts federal funding through research money and students who receive federal grants, scholarships and loans.
Rice President Malcolm Gillis spoke at Monday's Student Association Senate meeting with Sociology Professor Chandler Davidson, Associate History Professor Ed Cox, Dean of Admission and Records Richard Stabell and Director of Admission Julie Browning to address the decision and its affect on Rice admissions.
"As a respected institution of higher learning, we can neither ignore nor defy the law," Gillis said. "We're always going to stay within the law because that is how we're going to win in the long term."
However, Gillis said that the short-term costs will be painful.
One immediate cost is that a number of students who gained admission under regular decision can no longer be accepted because race played a factor in their acceptance.
"We [the admission committee] have looked at a lot of different things ... in making our decisions on each of our applicants. Then suddenly we have learned that a decision that has been handed down by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals" questions the university's current admission strategies, Davidson said.
"There is still a significant number of minority students that will be [accepted]."
Offers of acceptance issued under early and interim decisions will not be rescinded, even though race may have been a factor in admission.
Still, Gillis said that minority admissions will hurt in the near future.
Several students at the meeting asked the panel how the university would compensate for this potential decrease in minority admission.
Sid Richardson College junior Michael Gomez asked whether "other criteria [will] be taken into account ... that don't involve race directly but indirectly."
Davidson responded that the court decision "did not preclude any [criteria] correlative of race," including overcome factors and multilingual abilities.
Assistant Director of Admission Tamara Siler said that Rice will come up with "creative ways" to admit more minorities.
Jones College junior Packy Saunders asked if there is " anything that we can do with the incoming pool to get the highest yield [of minorities] we can."
Browning responded by emphasizing the importance of such programs as Owl Day and phone-a-thons to attract future Rice students.
"The single most influential factor for students choosing Rice is in this room [the students] ... when you bring students to campus and they have a bad experience, they are lost forever," Browning said.
Minority recruitment programs such as Vision, which are still legal, will also be emphasized.
Though the university will fully abide by the law, the panelists all expressed their disappointment in the court decision.
Gillis said he was upset that the court was forcing Rice and other universities to change their admission policies in this manner.
Davidson agreed, "I feel badly about it. I feel outraged about it. The court has said that race cannot be a factor [in admission decisions] ... I find it reprehensible," he said.
Cox said, however, that defying the court decision would be wrong.
"As a historian and one who's studied the civil rights movement, I find that position [noncompliance with the law] unacceptable," he said.
Browning said, "Please keep in mind that that is one judge who has had a powerful effect ... but he has never been part of this part of this community."
The panelists also voiced concern over the image Rice will gain without having race-based affirmative action in admission policies.
"This is a forward-looking unviersity ... unique in the nation perhaps. ... We can't let people get the wrong ideas," Davidson said. "This decision ... only applies to those schools in the Fifth Circuit ... Harvard, Stanford and Princeton are not in that district and can go blithely ahead [without regard to the decision]."
Still, the panelists are not completely without hope for furture minority numbers.
"We have an amazing group of students in Rice's pool [of applicants] of every color," Browning said.
Gillis said, "A lot of people will be suprised by the number that do come even when we abide by the court order and not take race into account."
The court decision itself will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by Texas Attorney General Dan Morales. However, an article in the March 27 issue of the Houston Chronicle reported that the case will likely be heard next fall, with an opinion not being issued before the following spring or summer.
This item appeared in the News section of the March 29, 1996 issue.
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