Issue date: 1/14/03 Section: Opinion

An open letter to the Supreme Court Justices of the United States of America:

I appreciate this opportunity to communicate with you concerning an issue affecting young Americans from the unique perspective of a current college student. Racial preferences, even where illegal, are a practice rampant in higher education. At Texas A&M University, the situation is no different. Young people are being discriminated against, not for their lack of academic ability, but for the lack of melanin in their skin. I urge you to end diversity initiatives and all other rationales for institutional race discrimination as you begin to hear the case of Gratz v. Bollinger. Whereas the Bush administration has been fearful of issuing an opinion on the case since the Trent Lott debacle, now is a time for greater resolve against racism.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. This description fits land grant colleges, which includes Texas A&M. Students and applicants at A&M face new forms of discrimination that include minority--only scholarships sponsored by University resources, race-based recruitment policies, departments devoted to serving students along ethnic lines, race-based student groups that receive University funding, and the disparate impact of Top 10-percent admissions program. I ask that the court render an unambiguous ruling unlike the one delivered 25 years ago in University of California v. Bakke that has led to the above-mentioned practices.

There are several faults with those who argue in favor of racial discrimination in higher education.

The word "diversity" as used by educators is a misnomer. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, "diversity" means "differing from one another, unlike, variety, composed of distinct or unlike elements or qualities." According to this definition, diversity is already present at every academic institution since each individual has distinct qualities. It would be impossible to create more "diversity" in higher education by changing which applicants comprise the student body.

Judge Jerry Smith wrote in Hopwood v. Texas, "I concede that the law school's (University of Texas) 1992 admissions process would increase the percentages of black faces and brown faces in that year's entering class. But facial diversity is not true diversity.... Instead, individuals, with their own conceptions of life, further diversity of viewpoint.... To foster such diversity, state universities and law schools and other governmental entities must scrutinize applicants individually, rather than resorting to the dangerous proxy of race."

In Texas, even though the Hopwood v. Texas decision that struck down racial discrimination in higher education applies, administrators make little effort to disguise their true motives when attempting to circumvent the ruling. A&M President Dr. Robert M. Gates was quoted in a recent University press release stating that diversifying the campus is one of his most important priorities. "This campus needs to look more like the state of Texas; 93 percent of our undergraduates are Texans. Texas is 32 percent Hispanic; we're 9 percent. Texas is almost 12 percent African-American; we're under 3 percent." Administrators attempting to achieve diversity are actually renaming racial preferences and quotas under a seemingly less offensive title. As the Associated Press recently reported, "A&M has tried to attract minority college students by targeting certain high schools." According to the Bryan/College Station Eagle, "The new (Texas A&M) diversity vice president will be responsible for identifying and spreading 'best practices' -- strategies that have resulted in minority enrollment gains of students and faculty." These race-conscious actions overtly place this public institution's value of applicants on their ethnicity rather than their personal merit. Racial discrimination is illegal, regardless of the euphemism used to describe it.

Some proponents of racial discrimination in higher education have even resorted to archaic and racist reasoning. University of Michigan Professor Patricia Gurin gave expert testimony earlier in the case to this end. "Students who experienced the most racial and ethnic diversity in classroom settings and in informal interactions with peers showed the greatest engagement in active thinking processes, growth in intellectual engagement and motivation, and growth in intellectual and academic skills." Thoughts, intelligence, and ideas are not functions of skin color. Regardless of whether the archaic theories of relative racial intelligence are in question, they have no purpose before the law. As Justice O'Connor opined in Metro Broadcasting v. FCC, "Social scientists may debate how people's thoughts and behavior reflect their backgrounds, but the Constitution provides that the government may not allocate benefits or burdens among individuals based on the assumption that race or ethnicity determines how they act or think."

Only a clear ruling, not providing room for administrators to invent and circumvent, can solve the current crisis. The court and the Constitution were both created with the intention that neither would be subject to the often volatile changes in public opinion. The time has come to obey the letter of the law that "all men are created equal" and that the government may not "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." In the words of revered civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." The court should end institutionalized discrimination once and for all, and make the dream of equality under the law a reality.

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