Category: Higher Education

[Quote:] Despite the small percentage gains over the twenty-year period,

the number of minority
students and faculty, when viewed as a percentage of the total, remains

small. This is
particularly true of African Americans and Hispanics students. TAMU is basically an

enclave
for the education of white students by white faculty. In addition, although our

undergraduate
students are primarily white U.S. citizens, over half of our graduate students are

from foreign
countries or hold nonresident status. Overall, this is an indication of TAMU’s growing

inability
at both the undergraduate and graduate levels to effectively attract, retain, and educate

diverse
Texan and American citizens despite the need to do so as reflected in the increasing

diversity of
Texas’ college age population. In fact, over the last twenty years there has been a

12.9 percent
growth in our state’s minority population but TAMU still serves the same population

that it did
in 1981. We do note, however, that the sizeable increase in the proportion of women

students
and the increase in the percent of women faculty at TAMU is a major achievement over the

past
two decades.[end quote, Student and Faculty Minority Conditions at Texas A&M University: A

Longitudinal Comparison of the Years 1981, 1991, and 2001. June, August 2002. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY, pdf

p. 4, see links for complete pdf.]

Civil Rights does not mean equal opportunity, it means
equal results. We do not

even have equal opportunity in many situations
(education, job income, etc.) and even if we did, IT

WOULD NOT BE
ENOUGH. It is time to take back from the white man what he has taken from us
for

so long. Affirmative action is a first step, but we must go
further. We MUST require quotas for

corporate America and educational
institutions to ensure we get what we deserve and are entitled

to. Texas A&M
should be stripped of all state funds until it establishes an
affirmative action

policy, and if black students don’t exceed the percentage of
the general populace within 4 years,

funds should be revoked
PERMANENTLY. First steps to freedom! [tsmith5001@yahoo.com 1/9/2004]

State funding for Texas A&M University, and possibly confirmation of its regents,

might be on the line unless the university enrolls more minority students beginning next fall, a state

senator said Monday.

Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, made the comment after African American

and Hispanic lawmakers met with A&M President Robert Gates.

Source:

mysanantonio.com

http://news.mysanantonio.com
/story.cfm?

xla=saen&xlb=320&xlc=1096308&xld=320

“Welcome. This portal responds to the immediate Civil Rights challenge posed by Texas

A&M’s decision to suspend affirmative action in admissions.”

For complete text of Dec.

2003 page header, see “Read More” below: Dec. 2003

“Interposition and

Nullification” at A&M

Welcome. This portal responds to the immediate Civil Rights

challenge posed by Texas A&M’s decision to suspend affirmative action in

admissions.

Please feel free to add your comments to the stories below. No registration

required for that. Registration to post other forms of content, including “Forum” messages, is free,

quick, and secure.

Come back to browse updates, or register your email address for

occasional bulletins.

Note: The Texas Civil Rights Review began collecting links and

resources about institutionalized racism during a 1997 federal review of civil rights in state higher

education programs.

The team determined that vestiges of segregation still existed. This

places Texas in a special category of civil rights responsibility.

See essential

materials on the history of civil rights in Texas higher education at “Sections” (from the menu to

your upper left).

Thanks for your interest.
Greg Moses
Site

Editor
gmosesx@prodigy.net

A Poor Legacy:

A&M admissions policy

smacks of

unfairness
EDITORIAL-Dallas Morning News
12:04 AM CST on Wednesday, January 7, 2004

Texas A&M last year admitted 312 white freshmen from families of A&M graduates –

freshmen who wouldn’t have gotten in otherwise. It’s a nod to a long-standing program that gives

additional consideration to the children, grandchildren or siblings of former A&M students.
But

this is the same public university that announced last month it wouldn’t consider the race of

applicants in its admission process, even though many schools, public and private, take race into

account among other academic and non-academic factors.

As state Rep. Garnet Coleman of

Houston put it, “If you want to go to A&M, it pays to be a legacy applicant rather than

black.”

While that isn’t the message A&M officials intend, it certainly is the message

they have delivered.

In abolishing race as an admissions consideration, A&M vowed to

increase minority outreach and to focus on attracting low-income and first-generation college students.

But to our mind, it is wildly inconsistent for the university to reject race as an admissions factor

and then to consider family DNA to be perfectly acceptable.

A&M officials say minority

applicants with ties to the A&M family are admitted at about the same rate as white applicants with

family ties to the school. But while that seems fair on paper, there is a disparate impact. Last year,

six blacks and 27 Hispanics – students who wouldn’t have been admitted if family members hadn’t

preceded them at A&M – got in under the legacy program. In contrast, family ties provided enough points

on the school’s admissions scale for nine times as many white candidates to be admitted who otherwise

wouldn’t have been accepted.

Universities that regard an applicant’s race as one of

many factors for admission would be justified to include family ties as well in their basket of

considerations. But now that A&M has removed race from its selection process, the school also should

jettison its legacy program, as other Texas public universities have done. If, as A&M officials

contend, most applicants don’t need legacy consideration to be admitted, then that’s yet another

reason to ditch the program.

Perception matters, and the legacy program at A&M leaves

the impression that the university isn’t serious about increasing its minority enrollment. It’s time

for the antiquated system to become history.