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Letter to the Editor
theeagle.com
Jan. 13, 2004

The

editorial on Texas A&M’s admissions policy (Eagle, Jan 11) claims that legacy points are race-neutral.

But the numbers don’t add up to that conclusion. The editorial states that in 2003, legacy points went

to 312 white students, 6 black students and 27 Hispanic students. Of 345 students receiving legacy

points, only 9.5 percent were minorities — a rate that is lower than the 18 percent of minorities

attending the university, and much lower than the proportion of minorities in the state as a

whole.

By favoring white students disproportionately, the policy may have been

technically race-neutral in that it didn’t explicitly mention race, but it was not effectively race-

neutral in that it used a criterion that happens to be strongly correlated with race.

At

issue here are two definitions of race-neutral: one which narrowly looks at the description of the

policy, the other which looks at its outcomes.

Legacy points were applied in a narrowly

race-neutral way to relatives of former students.

But that population is not as racially

diverse as the state, or even of the current student body. Consequently, the outcome of the policy

statistically favored white students at a disproportionate rate.

Even though more

minority legacy students accepted the spots they were offered, the overall rate of minority admissions

under the legacy program was less than of the university as whole. This was not a race-neutral policy

as measured by outcomes.

One of the keys to increasing minority enrollment would be to

gain the confidence of the young minority scholars of Texas, who must overcome what they have heard

about the environment and culture of A&M being stacked against them.

The end of the

legacy policy at A&M is a small step in the right direction towards helping to change

that.

COLIN ALLEN
College Station

Texas A&M Ban on ‘Legacies’

Fuels Debate on Admissions
By GREG

WINTER
New York Times
Published: January 13, 2004

Last week, Texas A&M

abolished its preferential admission policy for legacies, the relatives of alumni, calling it an

“obvious inconsistency” in a system that is supposedly based on merit alone. Yet the move has hardly

ended the furor swirling around the university’s admissions policies.
Local politicians had

been outraged that the university continued to give special treatment to legacies, the vast majority of

whom are white, while refusing to give the same consideration to minority

applicants.

But ending preferences for legacies was not their goal. In fact, the same

politicians said yesterday that scrapping the policy was a poor substitute for reinstating affirmative

action as a way to achieve diversity on campus.

“This discussion is far from over,”

said State Representative Garnet Coleman, Democrat of Houston. “They act like they’ve done something

for students of color by eliminating the legacy program. They have not. The new policy takes away the

advantage of some students, but it does not remedy the obstacles faced by students of color and

women.”

Texas A&M’s decision underscores the volatile relationship between affirmative

action and legacy preferences. While one has been the center of intense legal struggles, the other has

often been cited as no less discriminatory but scarcely challenged in courts.

Other

public universities, like the University of Georgia, have eliminated their legacy programs in recent

years, in part to ensure that if affirmative action is not being applied, then neither are other

nonacademic criteria.

Senator John Edwards of North Carolina has made the issue part of

his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, saying legacy programs give an “unfair

advantage” to those who do not need it.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of

Massachusetts, has also introduced legislation to require universities to put out detailed statistics

on the race and income of the students who benefit from the practice.

Even ardent

opponents of affirmative action often condemn legacy programs, arguing that they perpetuate the same

kind of advantages as considerations of race.

Edward Blum, a senior fellow at the Center

for Equal Opportunity, which opposes affirmative action, described the legacy programs as “bad

educational policy,” saying, “It smacks of elitism.”

Robert M. Gates, the president

of Texas A&M, acted last week after local lawmakers, members of Congress and community groups held news

conferences across the state to denounce the university’s preferential treatment of

legacies.

The outcry came because the university decided last month against using

affirmative action in admissions. That left it in the unusual position of rejecting race as a factor

while still allowing family ties to influence the admissions process.

“To be so adamant

about race not being a factor and then to have such a large legacy program is hypocrisy,” said State

Senator Rodney Ellis, Democrat of Houston. “It’s just so blatantly inconsistent that it defies common

sense.”

At highly selective universities, several nonacademic factors are usually

considered simultaneously, including race, geography, legacy and sometimes even how generous a family

may later be to the university.

At Texas A&M, most students are accepted on the strength

of their academics, Dr. Gates said. He also said that while some alumni were frustrated by the

elimination of the legacy program, most understood the reasons for doing away with

it.

In each of the last two years, more than 300 white students were ultimately admitted

to the university because their family members had gone there, The Houston Chronicle reported this

month. That is nearly as many as the total number of black students admitted to the university in those

years.

Because of a 1996 appeals court ruling known as Hopwood, universities in Texas

were barred from considering race in admissions until a Supreme Court ruling in June allowed the

practice. Since then, several of Texas A&M’s competitors have begun to look at race once

again.

But Dr. Gates contends that his recent revamping of the university’s admissions

policies were intended to increase diversity on campus. More students will be evaluated on the basis of

their hardships, experiences and leadership potential than before, he said, and outreach in

predominantly minority areas will be particularly

aggressive.

In one paragraph, Columbia professor Samuel G. Freedman congratulates Gates for bringing

“intellectual honesty” to the admissions debate. In another paragraph, Freedman says that although

Gates asks the right questions, he gives the wrong answers. See the paragraphs below. Is Gates

honestly confused? [Quote:] Gates of Texas A&M asked the right questions, even if he gave the wrong

answers. He recognized that the college admissions system is profoundly flawed. He erred in continuing

to trust standardized tests and thinking that, without racial or legacy considerations, the playing

field would be level.

It never can be perfectly level, and we should operate on that

assumption. If we give up the notion that merit can be measured by a test, and if we acknowledge that

many variables contribute to an applicant’s prospects and to his or her ultimate value to a college,

we can bring integrity and sanity back to the admissions process.

Diversity should be a

plus; so should legacy, high grades and many other factors. Once we unshackle ourselves from this

belief in statistical objectivity – once we plainly say that admissions decisions are an art, not a

science – we can lay to rest the merit-vs.-race argument and save millions of high school kids and

their parents from the collective nervous breakdown that applying to college has

become.

I know this new way can work, because I have experienced it. As a faculty member

at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, I have operated in just such an

unapologetically subjective system for a dozen years. Our program consciously has refused to require

standardized tests because of our conviction that they largely tell us who had enough money to pay for

Princeton Review or Kaplan courses.[end quote, USA Tdoay, Jan.

22]

Email: “Hola, Greg”
from Professor Marco Portales,
Texas A&M

University
Thu, 29 Jan 2004

Dear Greg,

Glad I have your e-mail

address from your
Texas Civil Rights Review website. Good to
see some outside help. I read your

letter to
the Eagle and the one to the Battalion and
meant to write to you . . . but I

have
been busy finishing the books listed below.
I have been writing on the race issue

for
awhile, as you may have gathered. FYI: When the minority faculty and staff met

with
President Gates on campus on December 18th,
2003 (a meeting that was not reported by any

of
the media), four Latino faculty members
stood up, as well as several other faculty

and
staff TAMU members, to urge him to follow
the Grutter decision, to leave legacy behind,

and
to do several other things that we believe would
improve our chances of recruiting more

minority
students and faculty. But he was already committed
to the position of admitting

applicants only on
“merit” considerations, excluding race anew (as
Hopwood, which has now been

superseded)
required between 1996 and 2003.

Below I am sending you my recent

and
forthcoming publications, two of which
address the issue of why we should embrace
race, in

keeping with the Constitution. As
you can see, I don’t buy the way conservative
groups have

interpreted the 14th Amendment
for their convenience, just as they had it their
way before the

Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Part of the problem is that they always want it
their way, and only

their way, without working to
bring in the perspectives of minorities.
Fortunately, Justice

O’Connor saw the
constitutionality of Bakke. So we are
constitutionally correct; the problem is

that
they have the power and the support of the
general public,

unfortunately….

Best

regards,
Marco

_____________________________

BOOK MANUSCRIPTS

under Contract for Publication

“Quality Education for Latinos: Print and Oral Skills

for All Students, K-College”; this book manuscript, written with my wife, Rita Portales, is designed

to produce more academically-competitive minority students. The 272-page manuscript received an

advanced contract from the University of Texas
Press in the summer of 2003 and will be published

late in 2004 or early 2005

“Latino Sun, Rising: Our Spanish-speaking U.S. World” is a

collection of 44 essays divided into three parts: Youth (8), Parenthood (12), and Public Policy Issues

(24).

The Texas A&M Press will published this 310-page
manuscript in Fall 2004

BOOK

CrowdingOut Latinos: Mexican Americans in the Public

Consciousness Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000; 209 pages

FORTHCOMING

ARTICLE

“A History of Latino Segregation Lawsuits” in The Unfinished Agenda of Brown

v. Board of Education, edited by James Anderson; Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, (March or

April, 2004, 20 pp.

REFEREED PUBLICATIONS

“Can the Supreme Court

Constitutionally Uphold the
Hopwood Opinion? Race, ‘Color-blindness’ and Public Opinion before

Bakke,” Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters , Volume 26, Number 1, Winter 2003,

26-46. Article traces the history of the concept of “color- blindness” from the Reconstruction Period

following the Civil War to Bakke and Hopwood.

“Examining the Recruitment and

Enrollment of Eligible Hispanic and African American Students at Selective Public Texas

Universities,” New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1999, Volume 16, Readings on Equal Education, an education

series. One of eleven articles in Education of Hispanics in the United States: Politics, Policies and

Outcomes, pp. 201-222.

“Hopwood, Race, Bakke and the Constitution,” Texas Hispanic

Journal of Law and Policy, University of Texas School of Law publication, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring

1998, pp. 29-44.

“Anti-Hopwood: Why Race Ought to be Legally Recognized,” The

Hopwood Effect: Problems, Prospects, and Impacts on Minorities in Higher Education; conference

proceedings, edited by Mitchell Rice, Race and Ethnic Studies Institute, Texas A&M University, Fall

1998; pp. 172-176.

“Affirmative Action: Best Idea, So Far,” Hispanonoticias: The

Hispanic Caucus of the American Association for Higher Education, featured one-page article; June

1995.

“K-12 Education and the Responsibilities of the University,” one-page excerpt

published by HACU, the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities; Seventh Annual Meeting

presentation; Washington, D.C., October 1993.

At an October 2003 meeting of Texas admissions officers, General Counsel

of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Jan Greenberg explained the legalities of Affirmative

Action. See the slide show yourself at our Download

section.