Category: Higher Education

A Review of Amanda Bright Brownson’s Dissertation on Texas School

Funding

By Greg Moses

Portside, ILCA Online

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Any hour now, Texas is expecting to read

detailed “findings of fact” from the trial judge who just (and justly) ruled two weeks ago that the

state’s school funding system is flatly unconstitutional. Make no mistake, the facts are plain. And

the future of civil rights is on the line.

In a 2002 statistical review of school equity

in Texas, for example, Amanda Bright Brownson predicted exactly the court rulings that were issued in

mid-September after a six-week trial. Fully two years before the judge ruled that state funding for

education was neither adequate nor equitable, Brownson wrote that, “Issues of both equity and adequacy

must still be addressed as we try to further raise our expectations for schools and students.”

And, with the school funding lawsuit already on the docket (as she was defending her

study before a dissertation committee at the University of Texas at Austin) Brownson even hinted that a

state-mandated $1.50 cap on local property taxes might pose “capacity” problems. The judge, in

striking down the cap, agreed that the cap had reached capacity.

Furthermore, warned

Brownson, “the Legislature will have to proceed with caution if it is not going to lose ground gained

with respect to equity, as it attempts to address capacity.” And on this point, too, Brownson

predicted the structure of the three-point court ruling that now will be taken to higher courts in

Texas for review. While the judge agreed with West Orange Cove plaintiffs that the school system is

under-funded, and that the tax cap should be lifted, he also agreed with intervening districts led by

Edgewood and Alvarado, that the state’s allocation of money is inefficient (the court’s codewords for

inequitable).

Considering Brownson’s impressive run of predictions, an observer of the

school funding trial might stand vindicated for having felt that the state’s defense looked rather

desperate. We’ll get another look at the state’s logic when a formal appeal is filed.

But returning to the Brownson study; even though it presents effective findings, there are

two features of its methodology that worry me in the longer run. First, Brownson’s analysis does not

address the problem of school equity as a civil rights problem. Edgewood interveners, of course, were

more clear on this point, because Edgewood leadership has been working on the problem at least since

1968, when the first “Edgewood” case, Rodriguez vs. San Antonio, was filed in federal court. Although

the US Supreme Court denied the claims of Rodriguez, an eloquent dissenting opinion written by civil

rights legend Thurgood Marshall ended with a footnote in 1973, that suggested a legal appeal to the

Texas constitution. A decade later, the Edgewood cases were resumed, putting Marshall’s advice to good

effect.

Brownson’s study was class-based, with focus on lingering gaps between “all

students” and students who are “economically disadvantaged.” Edgewood interveners, led by attorneys

from the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) also presented statistical gaps between “Anglo”

and “Hispanic” students; between “English speaking” students and those with “Limited English

Proficiency” (LEP)–terms of struggle that speak more plainly to the civil rights legacy of the school

funding struggle in Texas.

At first glance, the example of the Edgewood interveners

might suggest that Brownson’s methodologies can be easily adapted to civil rights applications.

Brownson, for instance, showed that equity gaps increase when expenses per student include costs of

educating specific populations, such as the “economically disadvantaged.” Using the same kind of

model, Edgewood interveners argued that gaps also increase if one accounts for the cost of bringing

mostly Spanish speaking students into a system of English proficiency. In one of the more thrilling

dramas of the courtroom, trial judge John Dietz took the state’s own bilingual expert, and in three

minutes’ time, got her to admit that Texas should triple its funding formula for bilingual

education.

And, just as Brownson used test scores from state-sponsored exams to

demonstrate lingering performance gaps for impoverished children, the Edgewood interveners plugged in

test scores to show gaps that separate ethnicities and language groups. So the uses made of the

Brownson models might seem to be extended easily to civil rights demographics. As long as the state

keeps pumping out standardized test scores, then inequities in education will continue to be measurable

for civil rights purposes. But this is where I think the model will break down in the longer run.

Tests are convenient measurements of “output” for anyone who needs to place numbers on a

scale. For students, teachers, parents, principals, and policy makers alike, test numbers have become

common currency. In the Texas courtroom, test numbers collected by the state posed invaluable evidence

against the state. Not only were overall passing rates on state exams introduced as evidence of

“inadequacy,” but gaps between student “subgroups” were tagged as exhibits to show inequity.

I have an amateurish hunch that the currency of “test scores” is pretty closely aligned with

the rise of the U.S. dollar (read capitalist ideology), and my suspicion is somewhat validated by

Brownson’s gloss on the history of “production functions” in education. Today’s educational

administrator is addicted to the kinds of fixes that “production functions” make possible.

What is both interesting and tragic, however, is that “production functions” were imported

from industry (capitalists) to education (capitalists in waiting) in order to satisfy a civil rights

mandate. It was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that called for a major study of educational equity in

the United States and it was the resulting Coleman Report of 1966 that used “production functions” to

demonstrate that schools were less to blame for student performance than, say, “family and peer group

characteristics.” So it was a capital intensive statistical tool that was used to prove how academic

achievement was more or less “inherently” attributable to social conditions rather than schooling. And

all this was done in the name of civil rights.

Of course, if the plain logic of the

Coleman report’s findings were to be followed out, we would have to conclude that social revolution

rather than school reform would be a wiser mechanism for expanding the intelligence of a people. And

there is a deeper civil rights truth to this line of thought, a truth that cost many civil rights

activists their lives during the sixties and seventies. But in the muddled world of everyday politics

in America, there is an oh-so-patient assumption that social reform, if not revolution, might be

nurtured through school reform. And when you get to thinking about all the things that would be needed

for any semi-coherent social revolution, or when you consider the way th

at status quo defenders in

America simply execute civil rights leaders outright, school reform doesn’t look like such a bad place

to both work and live.

At any rate, the marriage of civil rights to test scores is a

tragic match in at least one respect over the longer term. The more that test scores are standardized,

the more the curriculum must follow standardized tests, and, consequently, the less freedom teachers

will have over time to innovate the very social changes that will be needed to stop re-inscribing the

“inherent” structure of social intelligence as we find it. As Carter G. Woodson argued in the

Miseducation of the Negro (1933), standardized education for white students is going to wind up being a

repressive education for black students. Which means to me that attempts to bring “subgroups up to

standards” through “standardized methods” is a logical prescription for intensified “miseducation,”

precisely along anti-civil-rights lines.

Texas state demographer Steve Murdoch is getting

a lot of credit for spurring the Texas court in the direction of its rulings. Murdoch argued that

trends in poverty and “diversity” (more of both coming soon) demand vigorous educational reform. But

if I’m not terribly mistaken in my memory, it was a similar nationwide demographic report from the

Hudson Institute (Workforce 2000, published in 1987) that coincided with the state’s development of

“standards” in the first place. Something at that time looked a little too slick to me, when “scare

demographics” were answered with “standards.” I didn’t believe then that “standards” represented a

sudden eruption of “good faith” among educational leaders of Texas, and I still don’t believe

it.

Consider a recent out-of-class experience. On a recent Monday morning, a guy starts

yelling at a cashier: “well if you understood English I could tell you!” The guy storms out of the

snack bar, and I feel obliged to buy something from the cashier right away. She hides herself,

however, behind a tall stack of product and equipment, avoiding eye contact as she attempts to regain

her self-respect. Her co-worker steps up to take the next pitch. According to Texas standards, we had

just witnessed a so-called “English-proficient speaker” attempting to communicate with a person of

“Limited English Proficiency” otherwise known as an LEP.

I think it was clear to

everyone in the room who had the real problem with intelligent communication that day, but in the

jargon of Texas education policy, there are lots of LEPs, like that cashier, whose relationship to

English is just this shaming, abusive accusation that “standard English” makes speakers so much smarter

and better than all the other people around. Of course, there is no educational justification for this

attitude whatsoever, which makes it all the more shameful that the confrontation that I witnessed was

played out on a campus of higher education.

The Edgewood interveners are not only

property poor, they are predominantly Hispanic. The students, therefore, are facing not only a class

struggle, economically, but their ethnicity also presents them to the Texas educational establishment

as a “special challenge.” And Brownson’s reliance on standardized test scores, a habit picked up by

MALDEF attorneys, begins to solidify (or “legitimate” if you will) a regime of standardized

instruction.

It was profoundly ironic that on Sept. 15 the trial judge in Texas

referenced the Texas Revolution against Mexico in his prepared remarks after closing arguments. He

said that even Texas rebels wanted better education for their kids. The judge was arguing that

educational commitments could not be severed from the cultural history of Texas law. Yet, the very

next day, Diez y seis de Septiembre, or Sept. 16, would be a lively day of celebration among many

Texans of Mexican descent, in commemoration of a quite different revolution—the one that freed Mexico

from Spain. Between the judge’s Sept. 15 reference to the Texas Revolution and widespread celebrations

in of the Mexican Revolution on Sept. 16 lies a borderland of cultural histories that Texas people

share.

After all, Gloria Anzaldua didn’t live for nothing, you know. Her Chicana,

mestiza, frontera sin fronteras sensibilities were Texas-born and Texas-bred, and we are not going to

bury anything she stood for. I remember a job interview once by telephone: “What do you teach?” Well

I’m teaching Gloria Anzaldua’s new book at the moment. “Hmm, I think our committee would be looking

for something a little more standard than that.” Precisely. What would be the point of teaching

borderland consciousness if your students are busy preparing for standardized Graduate Record Exams?

So Brownson did a brilliant job by anticipating the model of judgment that the judge

would eventually adopt. And the judge has wisely folded claims from Edgewood and Alvarado into the

claims of West Orange Cove. As a consequence, Texas school funding is heading in a helpful direction,

toward better and more equitable funding. So I don’t mean to shout “stop the train!” (as if the

conductor would be listening to me anyway). But I do want to suggest that some major “challenges” of

Texas education will require much more from this state than “adequate and efficient funding” or

standardized regimes of tests. If Texas is going to grow, it will also have to grow up. And this will

mean revisiting widespread assumptions about regimes of standardized instruction, the better to keep

“test scores” and “English Proficiency” from killing the spirit of civil

rights.

Notes:

(1) Amanda Bright Brownson: School Finance Reform in Post

Edgewood Texas: An Examination of Revenue Equity and Implications for Student Performance.

Dissertation (Univ. of Texas-Austin: December 2002). Posted in pdf format by Permission of the Author

at the Texas Civil Rights Review: https://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/downloadz/brownson.pdf

(2) And that cashier I referenced in the incident above? She was not Hispanic. She was

Asian.

Greg Moses is Editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of

Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of

Nonviolence.

By Carrie Pierce, “Faculty Senate Addresses Master Plan, Enrollment, Feb. 10, 2004

“We are not racially diverse,” he [Frank Ashley, acting assistant provost for

enrollment] said. “Our numbers were negative for African American enrollment last

year.”

Of the 6,500 freshmen enrolled in fall 2003, only 161 were black, Ashley

said.

“We have something we have to work on here at Texas A&M,” he

said.

Ashley said the recruitment committee is sending people out to all regions of

Texas to attract students, blanketing the whole state.

The recruitment committee and

financial aid department are also coming together for the first time to discuss options, Ashley

said.

By Marco Portales

Thank you for joining us to celebrate Hispanic Heritage

Month at Texas A&M this year.

Many people need to be thanked for organizing the festive

activities planned between September 16 and October 15, 2004. Let’s hear an _expression of

appreciation for the organizers, the Hispanic Presidents Council, the Professional Hispanic Network,

the Aggie Memorial Student Center, Dr. James Anderson, V.P. for Institutional Diversity and Assessment,

Dr. Dean Bresgiani, V.P. for Student Affairs, and the group I represent here, MALFA, the Mexican

American/Latino Faculty Association.

Since I mentioned MALFA, I want to use this opportunity

to let all new Aggies know that, after working with the University’s administration for more than two

years, on May 28, 2004 the Board of Regents accepted President Gates’ recommendation to create MALRC,

the Mexican American/U.S. Latino Research Center. Currently a search committee is in the process of

selecting the founding director for a research center that seeks to study all aspects of the Latino

experience. Why? Because Latinos in the U.S. now number roughly 40 million people, including more

than 7 million Latinos here in Texas.

We, the Texas A&M Mexican American and Latino

faculty, are convinced that we need new knowledge and information about the largest American ethnic

group in virtually every discipline under the sun. Latinos, as we know, hail from all races and from

21 different countries. El Diez y Seis de Septiembre celebrates Mexico’s independence from Spain in

1821, but each of the other 20 Spanish-speaking countries also has its own history and stories of

independence.

On a festive day like today, ordinarily we talk about the past, about the

Diez y Seis de Septiembre, about El Grito de la Independencia promoted by Father Miguel Hidalgo in

Mexico, but, given where Latinos are today in the U.S., we need to consider the Latino Present because

that will shape our future.

When I was your age and in college more than 35 years ago, I

longed to read books written by Mexican American writers. I wanted to read books that spoke to the

world about our Latino lives and experiences in the United States. After all, Texas belonged to the

Spanish empire for 308 years before the Battle of San Jacinto ushered in The Republic of Texas in 1836.

For 308 years, the language of Texas era el Español, Spanish, and Hispanics or Latinos resided

throughout the Southwest in the areas known today as New Mexico, Arizona, California, and the southern

parts of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. But following the 1846 to 1848 War with Mexico declared by

President Polk, all of these lands, or 55% of the land that Mexico owned was ceded to the United States

for the nominal sum of $15 million, the same amount of money that Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana

Purchase from France in 1803. Such was the power of Manifest Destiny, the idea that God intended the

people of the U.S. to take over Native American lands from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That story, as

we know, is known as American History; and, as all of you know well, students are required to take

courses in that area.

What we are not required to take are courses in the people who

were displaced, the people whose histories we have know about and who have had to tough it out for many

generations. Over the years, I have discovered that is why Mexican Americans and Native Americans have

not written books that are widely known. In college I read Ralph Waldo Emerson, the writer who said

that every generation writes its own books. So where are the books written by the previous generations

of Mexican Americans, I asked when I was 19.

Well, our Latino ancestors were too busy,

struggling to make a living. They did not have the luxury of writing books. When one did, such as

Americo Paredes, who finished writing George Washington Gomez when he was 25 in 1940, editors told him

they were not interested in publishing the work of a Mexican American because they felt no one would

read such books. That is why Paredes’ book was put away and not brought out until 1990, or half a

century later, a year before I arrived at Texas A&M to teach.

Today, Latinos have

definitely arrived as far as the public consciousness is concerned. But here is the important point:

we have been here all along. Partially to celebrate that fact and mainly to provide you with what I

did not have when I was your age, I have been writing some books about the Latino experience since

arriving on campus. In November the Texas A&M University Press will published my nonfiction book,

“Latino Sun, Rising: Our Spanish-speaking U.S. World.” I wrote this book to share my experiences and

to provide future generations with some life stories, the type of stories that I missed when I was

growing up. It seems to me that people can use some narratives for traction, as it were, on which each

of you students can build your own future contributions.

Our challenge essentially means

that you have to ask your professors what the Latino contribution has been. We study and study and, as

most of you know, the disciplines and areas that most of you are required to study tend to be silent

about Latinos. How can it be that Latinos have lived in Texas and in the Southwest since 1528 when

Cabeza de Vaca roamed Texas and have so little to show for it? That is 476 years. How can Spanish-

speakers live for 24 generations (count them) and not have more than a handful of known books that tell

us stories about ourselves? How many of us, for example, can name, say, 5 Latino books? Try it. You

now know George Washington Gomez by Americo Paredes. Any other ones that immediately jump to mind?

People who know the field, of course, can name titles and authors, but most Americans will find the

challenge difficult.

There are, of course, other answers to the questions we are

raising. It is difficult to change the status quo, or the way things are. Why? Because the status

quo tends to block solutions to our needs. Because power concentrations usually run on established

tracks that have not traditionally taken us into account, brought us into the picture.

That is why, as Aggies, we need to encourage you to network, to learn how to develop common

goals so that the “Hispanic Voice” repeatedly emphasizes our needs and desires.

What we

need to pursue is what I am beginning to call Integrative Research. Integrative research because

Latinos have always been part of American society. Integrative Research because we need to discover

and then articulate how we have always been here and what we have done. Integrative Research because

most of us do not know about our Latino accomplishments and the nature of the lives of previous

generations, because we have not been seen as players, participants and doers. This means that even

ancestors who have been exceptions to the rule have not often received credit for their achievements

and contributions. Let me give you a backyard example on which I will close.

I was

walking by, admiring the new Chemical Engineering building that Texas A&M is building on the north side

of campus next to where the English Department is housed in Blocker. Working on the grounds, I saw a

worker who looked at me as I passed, so I said that the building looked very attractive. Without

skipping a beat, he quipped, “Si y todos somos Mejicanos,” that is, “Yes, and all of the workers are

Mexicans.” Do you think that the workers who helped build the wonderful-looking Chemical Engineering

building will even be in the pictures that we will see when the building is dedicated? Take a look at

the ground-breaking pictures of the people credited for building the George Bush School of Public

Service and that will tell us something.

I teach an Asian American nove
l by Frank Chin

ca
lled Donald Duk (1991). In this imaginative recreation of history, Chinese American workers who were

hired to lay track for the Transcontinental Railroad from 1865 to 1869 were systematically excluded

from the American History book pictures. The Irish crews, on the other hand, the workers who “looked”

more “American” to the Public Relations-minded railroad leaders were given picture credit for building

the railroad– at the expense of the Chinese workers who were left out of the history books. Chin’s

novel attempts to rectify that fact. But how many people have read Chin’s work? Since we do not know

of that historical injustice, do we notice that the Mexican workers won’t be given much credit for

helping to build that building and others on campus?

I hope you can now see why we have

to carry out Integrative Research that will help us to include or integrate and then articulate us into

past history so that we can have a better present. By doing so, our Mexican, Mexican American and

Latino sons and daughters will gain confidence in themselves because they will know that their parents,

or people who looked like them, worked in constructing these buildings. They will have a vested

interest in Texas A&M because the energies of their parents have been invested in this campus. The

campus will not be a foreign, intimidating place, but a place that they will want to be at, and perhaps

graduate from.

If we educate our sons and daughters better, perhaps some of the

chemical engineers working in that building in 15 to 20 years will also be the offspring of those

Mexican workers. If we do not make a conscious effort to include them and other Latinos in American

society, history has shown us that we will be left out, much as I argue in “Crowding Out Latinos.”

(2000) If we do not change how Latinos are seen, we will always continue to look like new arrivals,

when, indeed, most of us have been here all along–for more than 20 generations, as we have seen. To

put more than 20 generations in perspective, we need to remember that we have only had about 6

generations of Aggies since Texas A&M was founded in 1876. And that we are only about 11 generations

or so away from the 1776 U.S. Declaration of Independence.

Thank you for your kind

attention.

VERSION 17,
Texas A&M Hispanic Network’s Response
by

Colonel (retired) Robert F. Gonzales
Class 1968
April 22,

2004

____________

Note: This important document (see “read

more” below) is posted despite the objections of the author, who requested that it not be displayed

beyond “the Aggie family.” I have taken some time to consider the author’s request. In the end,

with great respect for the author and the Texas A&M Hispanic Network, I have decided to post the

document for public viewing. Texas A&M University does not belong to the Aggie family. It is a

publicly funded university and its policies are a matter of public concern. While I respect the

general rule to “not talk out of school” regarding matters that are more properly discretionary, the

subject of the following address concerns a widely publicized matter of public policy, and the remarks

were delivered before a large crowd that included reporters (see links below). While I regret the

author’s decision to not grant his permission, I have concluded that, as a matter of information

ethics, that the document should be part of the public record. Furthermore, I hope that over time, the

author and others will come to respect the principles and criteria upon which I have based my decision.

While reluctance to share this document is understandable from an “Aggie family” point of view, in

the end I think larger considerations prevail. It is quite a remarkable

speech.

Respectfully,
Greg Moses
Editor
Class of ’81

____________
VERSION 17
Texas A&M Hispanic Network’s Response
by

Colonel (retired) Robert F. Gonzales
Class 1968
April 22, 2004

Howdy!

En la vida, es importante estar presente. In life, it is important to show up. Thank you for

taking the time from your very busy schedules to show up today.
I have been asked to give the Texas

A&M Hispanic Network response to the addresses given this morning by President Gates and Doctor

Anderson. I am privileged to be your spokesperson.

Whoever stood here representing

the Network probably would feel like the ham in a ham sandwich, feeling divided loyalties between the

school we love so much and whose policies we want to support, and the direction our school has chosen

not to take concerning the future of our heritage at this school. With this dichotomy in mind, and

understanding that at times I will use the words “race” and “ethnicity” interchangeably, let me

continue with what needs to be said.

Before I deliver my prepared remarks, I think I

first must respond to something that I did not anticipate I would hear this morning. President Gates

read e-mails for three young Hispanic A&M graduates who support his position not to consider race in

Texas A&M’s admissions policy. Their primary concern is the unfavorable perception other students

would have of Hispanics whose ethnicity was taken into consideration for admissions into A&M. Although

their views are valid and should be heard, there’s another side to this coin and I need to state it in

order to give balance to this matter. I will do so using my own personal

experience.

While I was a student at A&M, I became active in student activities at the

Memorial Student Center. Mr. J. Wayne Stark was the Director of the MSC and he was the first person

who put the idea of becoming a lawyer into my head. I pursued this course and decided I wanted to

attend the University of Texas Law School. I took the LSAT, but I did not do very well. Consequently,

in addition to the University of Texas, I applied to three other law schools in the State. Before

graduation day, I received letters of acceptance to the other three law schools, but I had not heard

from the University of Texas. I drove to Austin to find out the status of my application. The lady in

the Admissions Office confirmed my LSAT score had prevented me from being automatically accepted, but

my name was on the waiting list. She explained there was still a chance I could be accepted, but I

would have to wait a few more weeks until they heard back from all of the automatic-admits on whether

they planned to enroll or not, to see how many seats would remain unfilled and thus available to those

of us on the waiting list. Then she told me the law school was starting a new affirmative action

program and, because I was a Mexican-American, I may have a better chance than others on the waiting

list for any available seats.

I explained what I had been told to my parents and two of

my uncles from the Classes of ’41 and ’50. Should I accept an offer from one of the three law schools

based on “merit” or should I wait on T.U. and possibly get admitted under its affirmative action

program. One of my uncles asked me, “Do you have any idea how many Mexicans are students at T.U.’s law

school?” I had no idea. He speculated there were less than ten. Then he said, “T.U. is the best law

school in the State. I don’t care if you get in the front door, the side door, or the backdoor. If

T.U. accepts you, you go there!” I received my acceptance letter to T.U. a couple of weeks later and I

enrolled in September 1968 along with twelve other Hispanics in a class of 450.

I

wondered whether I had been admitted as an alternate on “merit” or under affirmative action, so I

stopped by the Admissions Office one day to ask. I saw a different lady than the one I had seen before

and she responding by giving me this advice, “Don’t worry about how you got in. You need to

concentrate on staying in and graduating.”

Only one student ever asked me how I got into

law school. His name was John and John was Anglo. Therefore, we can assume that John got into law

school solely on “merit.” When I returned for my second year of law school, John was not around. When

I asked what happened to John, I was told, “John flunked out!”

If I got into law

school under affirmative action, I soon learned that none of the professors had an affirmative action

policy when he came to passing out grades and Dean Page Keeton surely did not have an affirmative

action policy when he passed out diplomas.

I have practiced law for thirty-three years

and during that time I have been asked frequently, “What law school did you graduate from?” Nobody has

ever asked, “How did you get into law school?”
I have made my income based on my law degree from

T.U. When I mail in checks to the University of Texas Law School Foundation, and the Texas A&M

University Foundation, and the Association of Former Students, and the 12th man Foundation, none of

them ask, “How did you get into law school?” What’s important to them is that I graduated and that I’m

sending them a check every year. . . . and they ask if I can send more.

This is my

adlib response to those three e-mails. Now, let me move on to my prepared response.

President Gates, distinguished members of the Texas legislature, Vice-President

Anderson, members of the faculty and administration, members of the Texas A&M Hispanic Network,

students, former students, and friends.

Texas A&M is a State public university, yet it

does not reflect the face of the State of Texas. There is a racial and ethnic imbalance on the campus

at Texas A&M!

Earlier this morning, we heard President Gates say that although he

is determined to correct this imbalance, he has decided not to use the race or ethnicity of an

applicant as a factor in the admissions process in order to achieve greater diversity at A&M. Instead,

he believes it is in the best interest of A&M to continue a policy based solely on each applicant’s

p
ersonal merit, meaning personal achievement, merit, and leadership potential.

Before

I give the Texas A&M Hispanic Network’s official positio
n to this decision, I need to take us back to

March 18, 1996. This was the day the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decided the

case of Cheryl Hopwood v. the University of Texas Law School. This panel said that any consideration

of race in order to achieve a diversified student body at a public university was not a “compelling

governmental interest” under the Fourteenth Amendment and, therefore, any attempt by a public

university to do so was unconstitutional. This meant that the University of Texas Law School had to

stop considering race, and in the future neither it nor any other public university in Louisiana,

Mississippi, and Texas could consider the race of an applicant as a factor in its admissions

policy.

As a result, the number of Hispanic students enrolling as freshman at A&M went

down from 714 before Hopwood to 607 in 1997 and further down to 570 in 1999. A&M has never recovered,

even with the help of the 10% law. A&M has been unable to enroll 700 or more Hispanic freshman in any

given year since Hopwood.

Eighteen months after Hopwood in October 1997, A&M President

Ray Bowen proposed that A&M strive to be recognized as one of the top ten public universities in the

United States by the year 2020. A task force of 260 prominent Aggies and friends of A&M from both on

and off campus, including our own Hector Gutierrez and Pedro Aguirre, surveyed where A&M stood and what

it needed to do to achieve this lofty goal. This was the foundation for Vision 2020, our road map into

the future. Hundreds of ideas were suggested, discussed, and debated, and when the dust finally

cleared, the group submitted twelve of them to President Bowen. They called these twelve ideas

“Imperatives.”

We cannot help but believe that the Vision 2020 task force of

outstanding individuals each in their own right was completely aware, fully-informed, and cognizant of

the Hopwood decision and the immediate impact it was having on minority enrollment at institutions of

higher learning in the 5th Circuit. Having seen the adverse effects that Hopwood had at A&M in the

fall terms of 1997 and 1998, Vision 2020 deliberately made “Diversity” one of its twelve imperatives,

specifically Imperative #6. In so doing, it stated that “Texas A&M University must attract and nurture

a more ethnically, culturally, and geographically diverse faculty, staff, and student body.” Further,

it went on to say, “affording educational opportunity to all racial and ethnic groups is critical to

the future of Texas.”

The task force then established a fair and reasonable target

that A&M should reach for, in order to achieve meaningful student diversity. That goal was to attain

in each freshman class the same percentage of minority Texas high school graduates who were college-

bound, which for Hispanic students was approximately 29%. So, we can plainly see that three years

after Hopwood said that achieving student diversity in a public university was not a “compelling

governmental interest,” our own internal group of Aggies and friends of A&M said that achieving an

equitable level of student diversity at A&M was an “Imperative.”

If you look up the

word “imperative” in Webster’s dictionary, it will tell you it means “urgent, absolutely necessary, and

compelling!” Imperative #6 of Vision 2020 was a resounding call for educational opportunity for all

minorities in the State of Texas, and it, in essence, rejected Hopwood as the way to do business at

A&M.

On May 28, 1999, the Board of Regents of Texas A&M, which included our own Dionel

E. Aviles, approved all twelve Imperatives of Vision 2020 and in its Approval Resolution charged all

future Regents, Chancellors, Presidents, administration, faculty, staff, students, and former students

to make a personal commitment to its success.

In so doing, our Board of Regents also

implicitly rejected the holding of Hopwood.
Then, on August 1, 2002, we welcomed Dr. Gates as the

22nd President of Texas A&M University. In his State of the University Convocation Address on October

3, 2002, President Gates stated, in part, “My highest priority is to make significant progress toward

achieving the imperatives of Vision 2020.” After consultations throughout the A&M campus community, at

the beginning of 2003, President Gates followed up his October address with an announcement that four

of the twelve imperatives would receive priority over the next several years and one of those four

imperatives was Imperative #6 on Diversity.

Four months later, I was sitting in the

dinner audience of the 50th Class Reunion of the Class of 1953, my father’s class. This was exactly

one year ago this week. Dr. Gates was the guest speaker, and it was my first time to hear him. That

evening he confronted the issue of diversity in the open as no other president at A&M had done before

by saying, “in a State where minorities will soon be the majority . . . . it is simply unacceptable for

Texas A&M’s student body to be 85% white and for our faculty to be 85% white and male.”

However, he did not specifically explain how he was going to improve diversity at A&M.

Keep in mind that for over three years prior to Dr. Gates assuming the position of President, Hispanics

and other minorities had been waiting for A&M to present a concrete plan on how it was going to

implement Imperative #6 and how minority former students like you and me could assist and support this

plan. I immediately wondered what Dr. Gates was going to do to bring about a real change on campus,

especially when Hopwood was still the law of the land.

Because Dr. Gates had also spoken

about the need for groups composed of former students of various ethnicities to form a partnership with

A&M on diversity efforts, a group of approximately fifty Hispanic Aggies met in San Antonio on May 31,

2003, to form the Texas A&M Hispanic Network. We discussed what we could do to ensure A&M was the best

model in the State and Nation to educate and develop Hispanic leaders of the future. We were told that

A&M’s student body was only 8% Hispanic and we all agreed to assist A&M to improve this percentage in

increments of two to three percent each year, until the percentage roughly reflected the proportion of

Hispanics in the population of Texas, which is currently 33%. We were very ambitious, optimistic, and

motivated, because Dr. Gates had energized us to face this daunting task with him.

Then, the Supreme Court spoke on this matter on June 23, 2003 in the two University of Michigan

cases of Barbara Grutter v. Lee Bollinger that involved the admissions policy at its law school and

Jennifer Gratz v. Lee Bollinger that involved the admissions policy at its College of Literature,

Science, and Arts. And what did the Court say? On the first issue of whether student diversity at a

public university is a “compelling governmental interest” or not, six of the nine justices said it was.

When the Supreme Court said this, not only did it overrule Hopwood, it also completely validated the

foresight, wisdom, and efforts of the Vision 2020 Task Force, our Board of Regents, and Dr. Gates.

I need to pause here for a moment to quickly give you an appreciation for the

significance and magnitude of a Supreme Court decision that identifies a governmental purpose as

“compelling” instead of important, legitimate, or substantial. The Supreme Court reserves this term

for only those governmental interests of the absolute very highest order. Essentially, before any

level of the government can discriminate on the basis of race or before it can place a restriction on a

fundamental Constitutional right, the government needs to show the Court that it ha
s a very strong and

good reason to do so. How many times, since 1942 when the Supreme Court started to develop the concept

of “compelling gov
ernmental interest,” has a governmental entity been able to convince the Supreme

Court that its purpose was “compelling?” Would you believe less than twenty times? Thus, student

diversity in a public university is on the same “compelling governmental interest” footing as

prohibiting child pornography, maintaining the Social Security system, preserving the integrity of the

electoral process, and protecting our national security. Do you understand better now what the Supreme

Court is saying to us?

On the critical issue of whether race can be considered as a

factor in a university’s admissions policy in order to improve student diversity, again, six justices

said yes, so long as race is used as a small factor among several admissions factors, in the context of

a highly individual and holistic review of each applicant’s file.

The Court did not

say a public university must consider race in order to achieve student diversity; instead, it said

public universities have the option to do so. Whether to exercise this option or not, the Texas A&M

Hispanic Network and the University each believe they are on solid ground, however, we are not on

common ground.

Although this is a very serious matter, I would like to

compare the Supreme Court’s decision and our situation at A&M to the sport of football. Initially in

the late 1800’s, the ball was advanced by running the ball and you won games by running the ball

effectively. Then, in 1906, the National Rules Committee made the forward pass legal. This change in

the rules did not make passing the ball mandatory; it simply gave colleges the option to use the pass

in order to win. Some schools incorporated the forward pass into its offense, while others continued

to reply on a running game.

A&M has been using a running game when it comes to diversity

and it has resulted in a very unimpressive “winning” percentage. In terms of diversity that percentage

is 85% white and 15% minorities. The University wants to improve on the 15%, but it has decided not to

use race as a factor in admissions; it has decided to stick with the running game and not incorporate

the forward pass.

Dr. Gates is the coach of the team, and he is OUR coach. We are his

assistant coaches. We think we can win more games if we incorporate the forward pass into our offense.

We think we can improve student diversity at A&M by using race in the “review” category of admissions.

Absent race, what admissions factors will be considered under the University’s plan in

the “review” category besides the applicant’s SAT score and class academic ranking? If you take the

admissions factors published in the latest undergraduate catalog, they would include the following

diverse characteristics: parental education level, extracurricular activities, leadership potential,

community service, special talents and awards, work experience, academic association with A&M, and

extenuating circumstances, meaning personal hardships the student had to overcome.

Additionally, the University will require all applicants to submit two essays, one that asks

applicants to “describe a significant setback, challenge, or opportunity in your life and the impact it

has had on you,” and the second one that asks “how will your individual characteristics lead you to

make a contribution to the A&M campus?”

The interesting thing about the University’s

plan is that, arguably, four of the eight admissions factors and both essay topics can have a certain

degree of correlation to race or ethnicity, depending on the contents of the application and who is

evaluating the file. The University apparently believes that the consideration of these eight factors

and two essays will produce the desired increase in the number of Hispanic applicants who enroll at A&M

each year.

The Texas A&M Hispanic Network believes that whether we consider race or

not is a direct reflection on a university’s level of commitment to welcome minorities to its campus

and to realize the educational benefits that can be derived from an ethically diverse student body. We

both want to achieve the same thing; we simply have a difference of opinion on how to do it. Coach

Gates says we can win with a new and improved running game. We say we need to incorporate the forward

pass, and if we do, we will win more games and we will improve our season record more immediately.

Therefore, please understand that our official Network position is that we

respectfully and deeply do not agree with or endorse that part of the decision that excludes the

consideration of race as a modest factor in A&M’s admissions policy. We simply cannot rely on an

improved running game and expect better and immediate results.

Bueno, ¿Que vamos

hacer ahora? Okay, what do we do now?

We discussed several options and all of them were

grounded on two principles. First, and foremost, we are all family. We all wear the ring with thirty

-three stars and our class year on it. Secondly, we are not going to walk away from our school on this

issue. Despite our disagreement, we will always have a partnership with A&M and we will always have

work to do. Of course, our strong preference is to incorporate the forward pass; to use race as a

modest factor in the admissions process, and we will continue to advocate and articulate this position.

We want what’s best for A&M too, and that is to achieve Vision 2020’s Imperative #6 as

soon as possible, by all means possible. If the educational benefits derived from a diverse student

body are truly a national “compelling governmental interest” and a Texas A&M University Imperative,

then we have an obligation and responsibility to use every legal means and any persuasive argument at

our disposal to make it happen! By stating our position, that’s what we have attempted to do

today.

If we are not going to use the forward pass, then we would like to express one

Hope and one Strategy. This is our Hope. If we do not see our record improve after one season, it is

our deep and sincere Hope that the University will seriously consider using the forward pass, using

race as a modest admissions factor. Specifically, this would be at the end of fall semester, 2006.

Any coach should be held accountable for the direction he has chosen to take or not to

take his team. And on this point we are proud of Dr. Gates, because he has publicly stated that he

wants to be held accountable. We believe the test that should be applied, and we think this is a fair

one, is whether the percentage of diversity within A&M’s student body has improved to the same extent

as that at the University of Texas, because we know that the other flagship university in this State is

going to incorporate the forward pass into its offense; they are going to use race as a factor in their

admissions policy.

As Dr. Gates explained this morning, the University’s new plan

includes some significant changes in its admissions policy. We are encouraged that factors which can

reflect the ethnicity and racial makeup of the applicant pool will be considered in the “review”

category. We are pleased that aggressive outreach programs will be implemented in an attempt to get

more minorities to apply and then, once accepted, to enroll. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we

are very satisfied that new and substantial scholarships and financial assistance will be offered to

those in need.

It all sounds great, but we are also aware that this approach is very

similar to the one taken by the University of Michigan, and their efforts never, never yielded the

desired “critical mass” of minority students until it started to consider race
as a factor. But there

was one thing the University of Michigan did not have that Dr. Gates does. Dr. Gates, take a
look

around you. You have us and our Network! And that’s the other reason why we are here

today.

You have given us time to voice our concerns, and we have done so. Now, it is

time to follow one Strategy and that is to work together as partners and as a family to build for the

future. This afternoon, the breakout sessions will be an opportunity for us to continue our dialogue

with our University. How can we improve communications between the administration, staff, and faculty

with the Network? What training do we need from A&M in order to be effective individual recruiters for

A&M? What campus life and leadership opportunities do we need to make A&M a more welcome place for

Hispanics? Your active participation in these discussions is very important to us.

Finally, what’s the bottom line? Dr. Gates stated the bottom line a year ago. “In a

State where minorities will soon be the majority . . . . it is simply unacceptable for Texas A&M’s

student body to be 85% white.” We should not, cannot, and must not be satisfied with a single digit

percentage of Hispanics in the student body at A&M. We all need to work together to achieve the goals

outlined in Imperative #6 of Vision 2020.

Some day there is going to be a Hispanic

governor of Texas. Some day there is going to be a Hispanic United States Senator from Texas. And

someday there may even be a Hispanic President of these United States. I want them to be wearing the

same ring we’re wearing.

Dr. Gates cannot make this happen by himself, Hector

Gutierrez cannot make it happen by himself, and we as a Network cannot make this happen by ourselves,

either. Building for the Future “together” needs to be our watchword. Coming together as we did in

San Antonio last May was a beginning; staying together as we will do all day today is progress; y

trabajando juntos por todo en el futuro nos asegura buen exito, and working together in the future will

bring us success!

Thank you and Gig’em.
More

resources on the Hispanic Network Summit

PDF Agenda posted at TAMU

website

The Batt: Hispanic Summit Praises

The Eagle: Group Asks

Gates

Aggie Daily: Gates

Highlights

‘Defeat ignorance, support diversity’
Hundreds of students, faculty and

staff
attend rally to promote diversity
By Anthony Woolstrum
Published: Thursday,

February 19, 2004
—–Caption—–
Michael Jackson (left), class of 1988, and Thomas

Spellman, class of 1986, hold hands in front of the Academic Building in support of the march Wednesday

afternoon. The march through campus was organized by the members of the Faculty Committed to an

Inclusive Campus and included a rally at Rudder Fountain. (Photo by John C. Livas / The

Battalion) “Aggies are diverse; we are diverse.”

This statement and others were

chanted Wednesday afternoon as hundreds of Texas A&M faculty, staff, students and members of the Bryan

-College Station community gathered for a rally sponsored by the Faculty Committed to an Inclusive

Campus (FCIC) to promote diversity on campus.

“We have to make sure that we represent

Texas A&M to the outside community the way we want to be represented,” said James Anderson, vice

president for diversity.