Category: Higher Education

Texas A&M President Buries
Summer Taskforce Findings:

Specially

Appointed Committee
Makes ‘Strong’ Recommendations
For Race in Admissions, but

Gates Dismisses “Diversity Domain”
And Fails to Release Findings
for Public

Discussion

By Greg Moses
Texas Civil Rights

Review
https://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke

Three months before Texas A&M

University President
Robert Gates announced his decision to exclude
consideration of race in

admissions, his own specially
appointed taskforce strongly recommended that race
should be

included. According to documents recently divulged in an open
records request, the president’s

taskforce on Aug. 29,
2003, recommended a “three domain” analysis for
admissions: “These domains

consider potential for the
individual’s success in academics, leadership and
citizenship, and

commitment to diversity.”

Gates adopted the first two domains, “academics,
leadership

and citizenship,” but he overruled his own
taskforce on the question of “commitment

to
diversity.” It is not yet clear who else besides the
president was given an opportunity to

review and
discuss the taskforce report. Findings of the report
are not mentioned in materials

provided to Regents, in minutes of the Faculty Senate, or in discussions
reported in the student

newspaper.

“I valued the recommendations of the task force
appointed to consider

revising admissions and related
policies,” said Gates Monday in an email statement
solicited for

this story. “There was open and
prolonged debate about the explicit use of race as a
factor in

admissions, and I carefully weighed all of
them. After much thought, I decided that, for

Texas
A&M University, diversity would be best accomplished
by basing admissions decisions on

individual qualities
— potential and merit — while accompanying such
assessments with an

aggressive outreach effort to
attract more minority students.”

Findings of the report

remained undisclosed and out of
reach from public debate after Gates publicly promised to expand the

university’s diversity policies
following the Supreme Court’s Grutter ruling, which
vindicated

affirmative action in June, 2003.

Gates set the tone of public expectations on June

27,
for example, when he posted a statement on the
internet that promised to explore

“additional
opportunities” made available by Grutter. In the June
statement he calls attention

to the fact that, “I made
greater diversity one of the top four priorities on
which we would

focus our efforts during my time as
president.”

“Texas A&M University was the first

university in the
state to appoint a cabinet-level official responsible
for increasing

diversity,” said Gates in his email
statement Monday. “Also, to the best of my knowledge, Texas A&M

is the only university in the state subsequent to the Michigan decision to adopt new admissions

requirements that create more opportunities for minorities. Be assured that I strongly believe that we

are doing just that — creating more opportunities for minorities.”

As one faculty

source reported via email, “many of us
here THOUGHT the President was going to use race

in
admissions because his positions until that moment
(December) indicated he was leaning in

that
direction.” Professor of Sociology Eduardo
Bonilla-Silva says that many “minority” faculty

did
not find out about the taskforce report until after
the Regents announced the so-called race

-neutral
policy in December.

Another faculty source who was active in the

Faculty
Senate debate said he is still not aware of the
taskforce findings.

“President Gates met with concerned minority and
majority faculty AFTER he made his decision,

a
strategy that suggests he was not too concerned about having us on board,” writes Prof. Bonilla-

Silva. “Had he thought we were central to his diversity efforts, we would have been consulted in some

way.”

A cover memo to Gates from the taskforce chair clearly shows that, during the

summer of 2003, Gates had already formulated a position in opposition to
affirmative action. “Had

we suspected that, we would
have been on the offensive from August onward!” writes Prof. Bonilla-

Silva.

The Aug. 29 cover memo to Gates, written by taskforce chair, Associate Provost

and Dean of Faculties Karan Watson, says, “the taskforce is well aware of your concerns that the root

problems concerning low diversity at Texas A&M University lie in the areas of ‘who applies’ and ‘who

accepts admissions’ to a greater extent than any problem created by our current decision process for

admission.” Watson’s cover memo, however, “strongly” recommends adoption of diversity-based

admissions.

“Even if our decision process before was not the
greater problem, and

with full acknowledgment that any change at this point in the process may be something of a lightning

rod for strong criticism and
mis-characterization, changing nothing is also a
negative message to

many of the people with whom we need to communicate our true intent and nature as a University,” wrote

Watson.

The taskforce also recommended secondary consideration
of legacy status as

part of a “University Mission
Factor.” Gates abolished consideration of legacy
status in

January, after Texas officials and civil
rights organizations criticized the university

for
considering legacy without race. The taskforce report
demonstrates that race and legacy

policies were both
presented to the president before the Fall term began.

In the body

of the report, the taskforce spends a full
page of single-space type citing existing

statements
and commitments to diversity already adopted by the
university, including “Imperative

Six: Diversify and
Globalize the A&M Community” from the “Vision 2020”
strategic plan assembled

by the campus community.

In the language of the taskforce report, the

diversity
domain in admissions would look for, “Students who
have demonstrated a commitment to

the broader
understanding, deeper respect and stronger cooperation
among diverse cultures, and

individuals, or will help
our educational environment in developing these
commitments.”

The diversity domain would be evaluated in two
“dimensions.” First, a student’s

experiences and
commitments, including veteran status, living abroad,
second-language

proficiency, or migrant status.
Second, a student’s capabilities and characteristics,
including

visible minorities such as, “American
Indian, Alaskan Native, African-American, Black,

Asian
American, Pacific Islander, Hispanic, religious
commitment that is reflected in dress,

visible
disability, men in historically female disciplines,
women in historically male

disciplines, and visible
international applicants.” In each dimension
applicants would be rated

on a scale from Above
Average to Weak.

The taskforce document argues that the

inclusion of
visibly diverse students would help other students,
“learn to avoid stereotyping.”

“Currently,” says the taskforce report, “the groups
listed above often report the

sense that they are
treated differently, often in demeaning or hostile
ways, in courses and other

activities on campus. We
fully acknowledge that individuals from each of these
groups do not

represent a singular viewpoint,
background or commitment to diversity, but that is

the
educational point of having a diverse set of these
people, who often get cast into negative

or demeaning
stereotypes, present on campus.”

The taskforce report then calls for

annual and
bi-annual review of diversity policies.

“While I did not expect all

members of the campus

community to agree with my decision, I am encouraged
by the amount of

support this new policy has
received,” continued Gates in
his email statement.
“Because of their

loyalty to this university, many who
did not support my decision are nevertheless

working
passionately to promote the university’s diversity
goals. This serves as evidence of

the strong sense of
community that permeates this institution.”

The president’s

office will be a co-sponsor for a
planned Diversity Rally on Wednesday at the College
Station

campus. The primary sponsor of the rally,
Faculty Committed to an Inclusive Campus, will

be
speaking in favor of affirmative action in admissions.
The Texas A&M Student Senate has

announced that it
will break away from the Diversity rally to hold a
separate “Rally for Merit”

at the same time. The
student representatives do not want to be affiliated
with any groups

favoring the consideration of race in
admissions.

Today, it is difficult to say how

public debate might
have been affected if findings of the 2003 Task Force
on Admissions had been

released. The only document to
seriously address the question of diversity in
admissions at

Texas A&M University argued “strongly”
in favor of “narrowly tailored” considerations

of
race.

Although Gates says he gave the issue a lot of
thought, no document has

yet been found which makes
the studied case for the eventual adoption of
so-called race-neutral

admissions.

Notes:

The Texas Civil Rights Review will post the

complete
email from Gates along with copies of the report from
the Task Force on Diversity.

Please check the website
for updates at:

https://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke

Special thanks to Associate Editor Tony Gallucci for
his help in preparing this

story.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (June 24, 2004) – A new report documents the

continuing lack of racial and ethnic diversity at Texas A&M, the University of Texas at Austin, and

within Texas law and medical schools, despite many energetic efforts to try race-neutral

alternatives.

Go to Equal Justice

Society Web Site

EXCERPTS:

(1) We also conclude that the Ten Percent

Plan is “good but not good
enough” regarding racial/ethnic diversity because the percentage of Black

and
Latino graduates from the most competitive high schools in Texas are less likely
to enroll in

selective public universities in Texas than they were prior to Hopwood….. (2) Another policy reason

for moving beyond sole reliance on test scores and
grade-point averages is the need to evaluate

students’ promise within the context
of their opportunities, rather than cementing structural

inequalities in K-12
education. For example, across all Texas high schools, 21.6% of Whites

are
enrolled in AP courses, compared to only 11.4% of African Americans and 12.4%
of Latinos.

While the Edgewood litigation and the subsequent school finance
legislation played a major role in

making public school funding in Texas more
equitable, as it stands there is still a legally

permissible gap between the
funding per student in low-wealth and high-wealth school districts. [pdf

55]

(3) “Texas is deeply segregated, regionally and neighborhood-by-neighborhood in its

major cities, so
the majority of our high schools are almost entirely white or black or brown. This

law is colorblind,
but it used our bitter history of segregation to promote diversity.”–David

Montejano [pdf 55, note 230]

(4) While the diversity rationale is the focus of this

policy report, the Supreme
Court also recognizes that remedying the present effects of past

discrimination
can be a compelling interest for public entities to justify race-

conscious
affirmative action. In order for a university to institute affirmative action
based on

a remedial justification, it must establish that it has a “strong basis in
evidence for its

conclusion that remedial action was necessary.” [pdf 61]

GSC supports FCIC March for Diversity
By James Twine
Published:

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

The Texas A&M Graduate Student Council (GSC) said at its

meeting Tuesday that it would support Wednesday’s diversity

march.

MALDEF Stands its Ground in Texas School Funding Trial

By Greg

Moses
Texas Civil Rights Review
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2004/08/116354.ph

p

On a recent Friday, when Texas judge John Dietz summons attorneys “to the bench” in his

Austin courtroom, thirteen well-suited lawyers come forward. There are lawyers for the state, who

argue that the school funding system adopted by the legislature in 1993 is working as best it can.

There are lawyers for wealthier school districts, such as West Orange Cove or Highland Park, who want

the 1993 system shut down. And there are lawyers for the state’s impoverished school districts, such

as Edgewood or Alvarado, who at first tried to stop this fight altogether, but who are now looking for

ways to preserve, enforce, and extend the constitutional framework that the 1993 laws represent.

The public file for this school funding case (soon to be known as Edgewood Five?) approaches the

two foot mark. But on a day when parts go missing, the district clerk’s office is equipped with

something called DMS, or document management system, into which all the public documents for this case

have been scanned. And I am told there are, in addition, at least ten cd’s that the various attorneys

have made with all their exhibits in pdf, excel, powerpoint, and whatnot formats, that they can export

from their Dell laptops to bright-screen displays in court.

With all the lawyers,

paperwork, and documentary intrigue, the spectacle surrounding the school funding trial is Texas-sized

and more to my wire-rimmed taste than the Sandra Bullock mansion dispute going on somewhere in the

vicinity. Not that I wouldn’t mind seeing the movie star, or treating her to some sympathy about what

it feels like to have your life occupied by (alleged) runaway contractors, but I’m more interested in

how her vacant mansion works as a metaphor these days for where the whole story of Texas school funding

begins.

School history in Texas begins during the bad old days of statutory segregation,

followed by the rising hopes of civil rights, fading now into ever-so-nuanced cycles of postmodernized

vestiges, in which glaring inequalities between rich and poor neighborhoods become sites of

administrative analysis, consulting contracts, and formulas for funding so arcane that in order to

compute them, dude, you gotta get a Dell.

The first three Edgewood rulings by the Texas

Supreme Court (in 1989, 1991, and 1992) said that Texas had not yet come up with a constitutional

method of funding education—a method that should be at once “adequate, suitable, and efficient.” The

fourth Edgewood opinion by the Texas Supreme Court in 1995 said, finally, okay, the Texas Legislature

in 1993 had finally passed a constitutional plan.

Which brings us to the fifth Edgewood

suit, more properly styled West Orange Cove v. Nelson, named for a school district and a commissioner

of education. The school district is first among a list of almost fifty districts (hereafter referred

to as richer districts) who claim that the state has so poorly assisted public education in Texas that

local property taxes are doing all the state’s work and, therefore, that local property taxes have

become state property taxes. Since state property taxes are unconstitutional in Texas, the richer

districts want the very laws abolished that it took four Edgewood opinions to

produce.

The 1993 laws, known as Chapters 41 and 42 of the Texas Education Code, make it

somewhat possible for school districts to take money raised from a mansion in one district and spend

that money for education in another. Nearly fifty of these richer districts, in the precious language

of legalese, pray to the court, to prevent the state from enforcing Chapters 41 and 42. If these

districts succeed in shutting down the statewide system of re-allocation, they can go back to taxing

and spending as they please, keeping their mansion taxes closer to home.

I would be

surprised and disappointed if this so-called “recapture” of mansion taxes bothered a wealthy Hollywood

star, but it bothers enough other people in Texas, especially those who feel that children are born

where they deserve to be born, whether in mansions or manufactured homes. For such people it is

difficult to break the habit of thinking that neighborhood schools should rightfully mirror the ability

of neighborhoods to pay. And when they see taxes raised in one place being “recaptured” and sent to

another, they tend to think, like the Sheriff of Nottingham, that something has been

stolen.

On Friday morning, lead attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund,

David Hinojosa, was so tired he could barely read his own questions from a page of prepared notes. He

was speaking to the superintendent of the Edgewood school district, Richard Bocanegra. In the tableau

of the closing hours of week three, as Judge Dietz mercifully called a five minute break, the MALDEF

attorney and Edgewood superintendent were trying to hold onto a tenuous legal framework that had been

more than 30 years in the making. Of course it was neither this MALDEF attorney nor this Edgewood

superintendent who began the struggle way back then, but it is the MALDEF-Edgewood alliance that has

tenaciously over the years moved Texas education through the series of Edgewood lawsuits into the

equalizing practices of Chapters 41 and 42.

Neither crisply nor with brightening eyes,

Hinojosa and Bocanegra review their powerpoint slides, one by one. Here is a photograph of windows

painted over, to keep the sunlight out and the cooling costs down. There is a parking lot splotched

with standing water. Here is a portable classroom at Burleson Elementary. There is a photo of broken

sills and mold at Cenizo Park. Cinderblock walls of a 50-year-old gymnasium are shown split open by

shifting foundations. Here’s another photo of Coronado Elementary School’s gymnasium. Here are window

air conditioning units spaced motel-style at Edgewood Middle School. There is a sump pump in the slab

at Memorial High, because the school was built upon a landfill. Truman Middle School, Wrenn Middle

School, deteriorating blacktop, ceiling tiles stained and broken from roof leaks, garbage cans catching

water…

“Mr. Bocanegra?” Hinojosa is circling toward a question that I hope he finishes

before he falls out. “Given the insufficiencies of the resources, the challenging demographics of the

students, and the inequities of funding, what prospects do you hold for the parents of your children

and the children themselves?”

After Bocanegra finishes his answer, I notice that the

benches on the state side of the room look pretty empty. Gone are some of the heavyweight lawyers I’m

used to seeing there. They have assigned this cross examination to what looks like the youngest lawyer

on staff. She treads lightly with bouncing inflections. This is way different from some of the

barracuda attacks that I’ve seen. When the witness is given back to Hinojosa, he mops up the day’s

testimony by asking Bocanegra to explain what it’s like to take his prospective teachers on a campus

tour.

In the summer of 2001, MALDEF helped to convince Judge Dietz’s predecessor Scott

McCown, to dismiss the West Orange Cove lawsuit. In a sparkling opinion, McCown guarded the gates to

the state funding system, emphasizing the overwhelming practical value of the “recapture provisions”

for the history of Texas education. In a concluding flourish, McCown declared that, “history is

truth—Until equity was required, the State shamefully treated and woefully underfunded the property

poor districts.” He did not see that the richer districts were as yet so stressed out by the funding

system that they had lost t
he
ir ability to exercise local discretion over their tax policies. And he

seemed worried that the logic of the plaintiff’s attack might undercut completely the hard won

framework that the Edgewood era has produced for Texas (a state which Friday morning’s papers declared

was now officially no longer mostly white.)

An appeals court also dismissed the West

Orange suit. But the Texas Supreme Court on May 29, 2003 remanded the case back to trial and demanded

a thorough inventory of facts and issues. Furthermore, the court seemed to suggest that, if only one

district can show that its funding has become so bound up by state priorities as to deprive that

district of “meaningful discretion” in its tax policy, then school funding may well have turned into an

unconstitutional state property tax.

This time around, MALDEF is agreeing somewhat with

the richer districts. Texas does not provide sufficient funds or meaningful discretion, especially to

impoverished school districts. But unlike the richer districts, MALDEF pleads with the courts to find

some way of preserving the hard-won Edgewood principles of equalization. In fact, MALDEF is asking the

courts to place pressure on the state to increase its formulas for “special needs” and to make

equalization an even more robust practice, especially when it comes to paying for facilities. When it

comes to paying for buildings—as the slides from the Edgewood district were trying to show—there are

still glaring disparities.

There is some evidence that the Texas Supreme Court is not

happy with the bad faith practices of state policy makers who have retreated from Edgewood more than

they have built upon it. In its ruling of May 2003, the court quoted passages from its own majority

opinion of 1995, written by Republican John Cornyn, who is now a US Senator: “Surely Texas can and must

do better.” And then the court added, “Little change has been made.” Even Republican judges, it

seems, can be ashamed at this level of injustice.

What’s not so clear is how the Court is

leaning with respect to the richer districts. In the early years of Edgewood the court had to strike

down three funding regimes in three years’ time in order to impress upon lawmakers the importance of

equalization and improvement in education policy. Now that they are facing the third challenge in a

row from richer school districts trying to evade equalization, the court may want to draw a big, bright

line for them, too. The court may be in a mood to say both to the state and to richer districts, look,

we gave you some very clear principles, now get busy trying to build on them. But, somehow this

scenario seems too good to be true.

In plainer language, the court may find a way to say,

why not try helping MALDEF and Edgewood in school instead of wearing them out in court? At any rate,

it would be a perverse turn in history to punish the state by turning back the equity clock.

Politically, such a ruling would signal to state policy makers that any time they want to break down

the court-ordered enforcement of equity, they simply need to starve the total system of funds. Just

because the state has adopted a passive-aggressive posture, doesn’t mean it can’t be klanlike.

On the crucial issues of equalization and progress, MALDEF has found an ally in another

set of players known as the Alvarado Intervenors, who claim that their commitment to “maintaining

Edgewood mandates is intense and undisputed.” Like MALDEF also, the Alvarado Intervenors argue that

the legislature has retreated from equalizing facility funds. As a result, impoverished districts find

themselves “trapped in the vice” where the state demands more performance on one side and delivers

insufficient resources on the other.

On Tuesday the Alvarado Intervenors argued in a

“bench brief” that the State’s bad faith could be proved in the difference between the standards it

sets for students, on the one hand, and the standards it sets for districts on the other. While the

state hands out tests that students must pass, it accepts from districts very low passing rates. And

why does the state do this? Because policy makers know very well that if they demand higher passing

rates, they will have to spend more money for teachers, materials, facilities, and support. It is

time, argued the Alvarado Intervenors, that standards set the pace for state budgets rather than state

budgets starving the appetite for standards. “What the constitution requires of the legislature with

respect to education is to place it in a different and higher position than other budget items.”

During a Friday morning recess, Alvarado attorney Randall B. Wood picks up his copy of

the day’s Dallas Morning News, carefully folded into a tight rectangle. “Look at this,” he says,

exasperated, pointing to a story about a South Dallas school district that keeps behaving scandalously

and keeps getting away with it. “There is no accountability here. The state keeps doing nothing.”

Faced with a state that says things are good enough today and with a coalition of richer districts who

say it would be okay even to turn back the clock on equity, the Alvarado and Edgewood attorneys will

return next week to try once again to keep the Texas courts moving in a forward

direction.

via email, Feb. 18, 2004

Texas A&M’s December 2003 Admissions Policy

Decision

For the sake of Texas A&M’s reputation among Latinos and blacks of Texas and

the nation, we hope that “Gains in minority enrollment will come through enhanced outreach, not

[through] changes in admissions policies, requirements and standards,” as the administration contended

in December, 2003.

But if more minorities do not enroll at Texas A&M in the next 2

years, we will have no choice but to consider race as a criterion, as the Supreme Court allowed on June

23, 2003 in Grutter. When Hopwood outlawed race as a factor in March 1996, Texas A&M was even then

enrolling a lamentably low number of freshmen minority students: 230 blacks out of 528 acceptances, 713

Latinos out of 1,432 acceptances, and 177 Asian Americans out of 510 acceptances. Since then we have

consistently failed to recoup even these numbers.

During the 7 years that Hopwood shaped

admissions policy, Aggie campus administrations repeatedly said that Texas A&M was “hamstrung” and

“hampered” from considering race. If only they could consider race, they would say by way of

deflecting criticism, we would have more minorities on campus.

But, since June 2003 the

Supreme Court’s Grutter decision at the University of Michigan has allowed colleges to consider race as

one of several factors. Texans and the nation had all been waiting to see if Texas A&M would consider

race as Rice and the University of Texas are doing.

This is not to say that we are

urging “race-based admissions,” as the media constantly claim and as many people believe. What we are

saying is that race ought to be taken into account–along with all of the other regularly considered

college merit admissions factors.

After all, Latinos and blacks who have earned high

grades, already have the test scores and can demonstrate a good number of the other merits that Texas

A&M looks for, thereby having proven themselves. In minority students, as in white students, such

merits are recognizable accomplishments that speak for themselves. Such applicants can rightfully

claim being special, to being exceptional applicants. That is why we say that race should be an added

diversity factor, one, among others, of the actual manifestations of what is variously known as

diversity.

In the wake of campus events caused by different attitudes toward race, no

one can be persuaded any longer that people are “color-blind” or “race neutral,” as some people want to

believe; and, apparently, neither is the Supreme Court convinced.

The $40,000 family

income cut-off qualifying a student for the new $5,000 a year Regents scholarships, we also need to

point out, is too low. We understand money is tight. And, yes, a student, of any race and background,

with a monthly family gross income of $3,333 who maintains high grades, takes the right courses and has

the needed test scores is a walking miracle and deserves financial support. But even a student with

two custodial parents at Texas A&M are likely earn more than the minimum $40,000 that is required for a

son or a daughter to earn such a scholarship.

During the question and answer session of

the December 3, 2003 meeting with President Gates, one student asked for financially more competitive

presidential and honors scholarships while another brought out that even families earning $100,000 a

year are now “struggling” to meet tuition, rent and other college expenses. If this is so, will

students with the Regents scholarships be able to put together financial packages that will allow them

to stay in school for 4 or 5 years until they graduate? Again, that would require another miracle.

For these reasons, it is difficult to believe that minority enrollment can be achieved

only by enhancing outreach efforts. We have unsuccessfully tried that approach since the early 1980s,

as former Professor Ruth Schaffer brought out month after month, year after year during the meetings of

the Minority Conditions Committee of the Faculty Senate.

Convincing accepted minority

students now to attend Texas A&M in the face of events that we continue to see and that have

traditionally kept minorities from enrolling here appears insurmountable. We are, nevertheless,

willing to be proven wrong. Hopwood has already hurt another wave of minority students and faculty

recruitment as well as campus diversity efforts for more than 7 long years. After 128 years, the next

2 years should tell us whether Texas A&M is capable of attracting more minority students without

including race as an admissions factor.