Sunday, March 26, 2006
Tech's still trying to catch its racial balance
Elizabeth Strother
Recent columns
- For those who have too little
- Time to gather mountain views
- Our blind spot on roads
- Following the money trail
From the RoundTable blog
The federal government is prodding colleges around the country to open up to white and male students the scholarships and fellowships designed to draw more minorities into higher education and more women into fields dominated by men.
This is one fight Virginia Tech officials think they can sit out. The university scrubbed its scholarship programs of discriminatory criteria several years ago under a directive from the state attorney general's office, spokesman Larry Hincker says.
"We don't have minority-only scholarships. You can't. We've been told, and I think everybody in the country's been told, that race-based scholarships are against the law."
Well, not everybody, apparently, since The New York Times reports that Southern Illinois University recently reached an agreement with the Justice Department to open graduate fellowships created for minorities and women to nonminorities and men. And the Education Department is negotiating with other universities to make sure they comply with two 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decisions, both involving the University of Michigan, that bring clarity to the whole, contentious affirmative-action issue.
Ha ha. Just kidding. The court did issue two decisions in 2003. But they didn't bring clarity. One of those rulings upheld the use of race -- in a "highly individualized, holistic" way -- in law school admissions decisions. The other struck down the university's undergraduate admissions system that awarded points based on race.
Lots of colleges and universities around the country remain confused. But, with the Supreme Court now listing decidedly to the right, "They're all trying to minimize their legal exposure," Columbia University law professor Susan Sturm told The Times.
Perhaps Tech's Ben Dixon can help.
Dixon is the university's vice president for multicultural affairs. When Tech's board of visitors, responding to complaints by the American Civil Rights Institute and the Center for Equal Opportunity, decided three years ago to bar any consideration of race from university hiring, admissions and financial aid decisions, then quickly reinstated diversity policies "narrowly tailored" to meet legal standards, Dixon witnessed it all.
His advice:
"Do not make a knee-jerk reaction to allegations.
"Do not make an immediate move on the defensive.
"Do not try to respond in kind to meritless allegations.
"Do a better job in promoting the things you are doing. ... And, to the extent you can, have full disclosure. Let the public know what you look like."
Dixon said the allegations against Tech "made the university look like they were excluding majority folk. In reality, there were only two programs that looked like they could have had that effect -- even though any majority person who applied could have gotten in.
"The provost said, 'OK, shut those down.' But others were never set up to exclude anyone."
The university continues to offer opportunities designed to improve the racial and ethnic mix of its student body while not excluding any group of people.
So the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program, named for the second African-American astronaut to travel in space, is open to "financially disadvantaged, first-generation college students of any race or ethnicity," according to Tech's Web site, and to "students from groups currently underrepresented in higher education (African-American, Hispanic and Native American)."
Its mission is to encourage students to complete their undergraduate degrees and groom them for graduate school.
If the result is more minorities being accepted into advanced degree programs, that is a good outcome -- for black Americans and for society as a whole. I say the same for undergraduate admissions.
Dixon noted that in the Michigan rulings, the Supreme Court "didn't say that diversity was bad, but a legitimate benefit that universities should go after." He advises them to "get out in front of that."
"I'd say, 'We're a majority white institution,' " but one that is diverse. "One of the benefits are the experiences our white students get -- the skills they get for the workplace that give them a competitive edge in the global economy."
Tech, he acknowledges, has far to go itself to become truly diverse.
"We're about 5 percent or so African-Americans; Hispanic, 2 percent or less; Asian-Americans are 6 point something percent. If you add it all together, plus Native Americans, we're in the double digits.
"But common sense tells you if over 19 percent of the commonwealth of Virginia's population as a whole are African-Americans, it's not rocket science to understand, with 5 percent on the campus, there's a little bit of a disparity there." And that hurts everyone.
"We're not a regional university. We're an international university," a point that makes Tech's current makeup look even worse. Whites are barely a majority in the United States anymore; in the world, they are a minority.
"Unlike in previous court decisions," Dixon said, "the court was fairly specific about the benefits of diversity. But you can't do it in a way that you're excluding anybody."
It's a narrow line to walk.
