Category: Higher Education

Posted

on Sat, Jan. 10, 2004
Fort Worth Star Telegram

Texas A&M will drop legacy

program
The Associated Press

COLLEGE STATION – Texas A&M University’s president

said Friday that the school will no longer give preference to applicants whose parents or grandparents

were graduates.
A group of state lawmakers criticized the legacy program Wednesday, and

representatives of state civil rights groups indicated that they would sue the school if the policy

didn’t change.

A&M President Robert Gates told The Associated Press that the threat of

litigation played no role in his decision to eliminate the policy immediately, although criticism was a

factor in the timing.

“What I’ve seen in the media this week certainly reinforced the

belief that I had to act quickly,” Gates said. “But I’d say the train was already out of the

station.”

Gates said that he initially believed the university had more time to deal

with the legacy program, which was recognized in November as a problem, and that he takes full

responsibility for any negative publicity for A&M.

Gates said that the policy played

less of a role in admissions than many believed and that university officials would continue to

encourage students from Aggie families to apply.

“But, after consultation with each of

the Texas A&M University System regents, I have decided that, effective immediately, Texas A&M will no

longer award points for legacy in the admissions review process,” he said in a

statement.

Prior affiliation with the university should not be part of an admissions

process based on individual merit and potential contribution, he said.

Some faculty

leaders had also said it was time to revoke the policy, which had been a formal part of admissions

since 1989.

Typically, anywhere from 1,650 to more than 2,000 applicants a year received

legacy points, usually four points on a 100-point scale that also takes into account such factors as

class rank, test scores, extracurricular activities and community service.

The school

acknowledged last year that more than 300 students were accepted through the legacy program who would

not have qualified otherwise. The president of the state National Association for the Advancement of

Colored People called the program discriminatory because blacks did not attend Texas A&M until 1963,

making minority applicants less likely to have parents or grandparents who graduated from

A&M.

Last fall, 82 percent of A&M’s undergraduates were Anglo, 2 percent were black, 9

percent were Hispanic, and 3 percent were Asian-American.

Gates has promised lawmakers

that he will lead a charge to increase minority enrollment. Gates said he had intended that the legacy

program be addressed in a review of admissions policy.

A&M was the state’s only public

school with a legacy program to boost alumni support.

Meanwhile, the University of Texas

at Austin is considering an admissions policy that would include race as a factor in selecting students

in an effort to boost minority enrollment — a move allowed by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in

2003.

“This is a win for every student whose parents didn’t attend A&M,”

said state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston. “But I’m disappointed that race and ethnicity have not

been reinstated as one of many factors in the admissions process.”[Todd Ackerman chron.com Jan. 9,

2004, 10:40PM]

“We know that A&M is a school that is built on traditions and talks

about the A&M family and traditions as one of its attributes. So, yes, it’s clear they wanted to keep

[new students] in the bloodline,” said state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, who had called for

legacy’s elimination. “The other outreach programs were akin to looking for stepchildren.”[John LeBas

theeagle.com January 10, 2004]

The same sentiment was voiced by state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-

Houston, who said “most right-thinking people still should be appalled because A&M is so

overwhelmingly white and is not using one of the tools — the consideration of race in admissions —

that could help it diversify;” and by Bledsoe, who said A&M has taken “a small step in the right

direction, but eliminating the program won’t repair the wrong done.”
[Todd Ackerman chron.com Jan.

9, 2004, 10:40PM]

Jan. 9, 2004, 10:40PM
A&M abolishes legacy program
By TODD

ACKERMAN
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Texas A&M University President Robert

Gates on Friday ended the school’s legacy program, acknowledging that giving preference to applicants

with blood ties to alumni is inconsistent with an admissions policy based solely on merit. Gates’

decision, effective immediately, ends a controversy that flared up in legislative hearings in past

years and prompted minority politicians and activists this week to threaten a lawsuit if the policy

wasn’t changed.

“I had intended that legacy be addressed in an ongoing review of our

admissions procedures,” Gates said in a statement. “However, public perceptions of the fairness and

equity of our process clearly are important and require prompt action to deal with an obvious

inconsistency in an admissions strategy based on individual merit.”

Gates said he made

the decision after consulting with each Texas A&M University System regent.

A&M may be

the first major university, public or private, to dismantle a full-fledged legacy program, national

experts said. The University of California System eliminated a program in 2000, a limited one that gave

children of out-of-state alumni a boost, granting them consideration along with in-state

applicants.

A&M’s legacy program gave preference to in-state and out-of-state children,

grandchildren and siblings of school alumni. They received four points on a 100-point scale that also

took into account high school class rank, test scores, extracurricular activities and other factors. It

was the only legacy program among Texas public universities.

The program drew heated

criticism this week after A&M acknowledged that legacy was the deciding factor the last two years in

the admissions of more than 300 whites but only a handful of blacks and about 25 Hispanics. The Houston

Chronicle reported the data just a few weeks after Gates’ Dec. 3 announcement that A&M won’t consider

race in admissions because he wants every student to feel they were admitted solely because of

merit.

State legislators and representatives from civil rights and minority advocacy

groups held news conferences around the state Wednesday noting the contradiction and calling on A&M to

end the legacy program. Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe called it “inherently discriminatory”

because blacks didn’t attend A&M until 1963, precluding the “legacy” of many minority applicants,

and some lawyers suggested they would file suit if the policy wasn’t changed.

Gates

said in a telephone interview later Friday that the threat of litigation played no role in his decision

but acknowledged that the criticism was a factor in the timing.

“I’d say the train was

already out of the station, but what I saw in the media this week certainly reinforced the belief that

I needed to act quickly,” Gates said. “They were right to call attention to the

inconsistency.”

Gates emphasized that the legacy policy played a smaller role in

admissions than many believed and said A&M will continue to urge students from Aggie families to

apply.

The program’s critics hailed the decision Friday, but most described it as just

“a first step.”

“This is a win for every student whose parents didn’t attend A&M,”

said state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston. “But I’m disappointed that race and ethnicity have not

been reinstated as one of many factors in the admissions process.”

The same sentiment

was voiced by state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, who said “most right-thinking people still should be

appalled because A&M is so overwhelmingly white and is not using one of the tools — the consideration

of race in admissions — that could help it diversify;” and by Bledsoe, who said A&M has taken “a

small step in the right direction, but eliminating the program won’t repair the wrong

done.”

A&M’s undergraduate population is 82 percent white, 9 percent Hispanic, 2

percent black and 3 percent Asian-American.

Critics of affirmative action, who applauded

A&M’s decision not to use racial preferences, also had urged the university to revisit its legacy

policy.

“A&M’s decision is good news for those of us who believe in merit-based

university admissions,” said Edward Blum, a senior fellow with the Center for Equal Opportunity, a

Washington-based group that opposes affirmative action. “Now it’s time for the University of Texas-

Austin to follow A&M’s example and eliminate both racial and legacy admissions

preferences.”

A week before A&M announced it wouldn’t consider race in admissions, UT

announced a proposal to resume taking race into account. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that race

may be a factor in admissions gave both schools newfound freedom in that area, overturning a lower

court ruling that had hamstrung both universities’ minority recruitment efforts.

The

Supreme Court decision seemed to focus more attention on legacy programs, often perceived as an Ivy

League phenomenon but actually common among selective universities. U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.,

recently filed a bill to require colleges to disclose the race and economic status of first-year

students related to alumni.

Coleman said he wasn’t surprised Gates acted so quickly to

end the legacy program after the Chronicle’s report was published because criticism of the policy had

come even from allies like Blum. He said A&M can’t lead the anti-affirmative action movement if it is

being criticized by its proponents.

But Gates said he’d essentially made the decision

before such criticism erupted, after talking in December with minority legislators and 100 university

faculty, staff and students.

He said he knew as far back as November that the legacy

program was doomed but first made the Dec. 3 admissions policy announcement because it involved a

change the regents had to approve. But he said that in retrospect, the legacy decision should have been

part of the previous announcement.

“Because it was not, Texas A&M suffered unfortunate

negative publicity,” Gates said. “I take full responsibility for

that.”

The Jan. 9 statement that announced the revocation of

“legacy” considerations in the admissions process, said, “not one student of the more than 10,000

who were admitted was admitted solely on the basis of legacy.”

If legacy has long been

an admissions criterion and nobody has ever been admitted “solely” on its basis, then what about

race? Wouldn’t it also be true that during the long years of considering race as an admissions

factor, nobody was every admitted “solely” on the basis of race?

The question is important,

because it indicates that if the admissions policies have been consistently and fairly applied,

students who applied for admissions during the period of affirmative action were always assessed as

individuals, never “solely” on the basis of race.

If, as the Gates statement stresses,

legacy criteria only resulted in the admission of students who were qualified in an overall sense, then

isn’t the same thing true of affirmative action?

But if the same thing is true of

affirmative action that was true of legacy admissions, why was it necessary to abolish affirmative

action in order to assure that applicants would be assessed individually?

[The above was

published as Letter to the Editor in the Bryan Daily Eagle, Jan. 13; and with some helpful edits in the

Austin American-Statesman, Jan. 15, 2004]

TEXAS EDUCATION

STILL NEEDS TO BE

DESEGREGATED

Dear Editor,

With all the helpful coverage and activism

that has already emerged in response to the Texas A&M decision to rescind affirmative action in

admissions, there is still one crucial fact which has not been reported: Texas higher education is

still under federal supervision for desegregation.

Perhaps everyone is a little

embarrassed by this fact, so people are a little reluctant to mention it publicly, but Texas has agreed

to four successive “Texas Plans” with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

The first Texas plan officially began in 1983. The fourth Texas plan was offered by Gov. George W. Bush

in the summer of 2000, and it will continue for several more years.

In fact, Texas A&M

adopted affirmative action on Dec. 5, 1980, in order to show that the university could be counted on to

act as a trustworthy partner in “good faith” during the upcoming years of desegregation. Affirmative

action, therefore, is the university’s way of saying, you can depend on us to take responsibility for

our own desegregation.

The crucial context of desegregation changes everything about the

importance of the Texas A&M decision, so it should be reported and discussed, not evaded.

[Austin Chronicle, Jan. 15, 2004]

Gates said he was prepared for a flood of e-mails on the subject and that

he hopes most Aggies see this as the “next logical step” in a new approach to picking the A&M student

body.

“My guess is that a lot of former students don’t really appreciate how little

impact legacy has had on the process in the real world,” he said. “If the reality is that legacy helped

300 get in, the perception of some Aggies is probably that it’s 3,000.”

He added that

A&M officials will continue to encourage students from Aggie families to apply for

admission.

Gates said he discussed the legacy decision with the A&M System Board of

Regents and members were supportive. Several regents — including Chairman Lowry Mays and Vice Chairman

Erle Nye, both A&M graduates — could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon. [John LeBas

theeagle.com January 10, 2004]

See Official Gates statement of Jan. 9, 2004 below.

January 9, 2004

STATEMENT ON LEGACY

http://www.tamu.edu/president/speeche

s/040109legacy.html

Texas A&M University President Robert Gates

On

December 3, 2003, when I announced the comprehensive plan to recruit and enroll more minorities at

Texas A&M University, I stated that all students would be admitted based on individual merit and

potential contribution to the University community. Further, I stated at that time and in subsequent

meetings with legislators and internal and external groups that all admissions factors—including

legacy—were under review to ensure that we have a fair and equitable process. This was due in part to

our understanding that there was an inconsistency in the continued use of legacy in a merit-based

process.

We believe, as virtually every university in the country does, that students

whose family members have attended its university add value to what makes those institutions unique.

This is especially true at Texas A&M. At the same time, the solidity of the Aggie family and the

strength of the Aggie culture are not the result of four out of 100 points on an admissions evaluation.

For the three-fourths of our freshmen who were enrolled in the fall of 2003 under the top ten percent

law and automatic academic admission, legacy was irrelevant. Indeed, not one student of the more than

10,000 who were admitted was admitted solely on the basis of legacy. In fact, legacy has been a formal

part of A&M’s admissions process only since 1989 and has played far less of a role in admissions than

either Aggies or others probably believe.

In an admissions process based on individual

merit and potential contribution to the university community, prior affiliation with Texas A&M should

not be a criterion. We intend to continue to urge students from Aggie families to apply to A&M and, if

accepted, to enroll here. But, after consultation with each of the Texas A&M University System Regents,

I have decided that, effective immediately, Texas A&M will no longer award points for legacy in the

admissions review process.

I had intended that legacy be addressed in an ongoing review

of our admissions procedures. However, public perceptions of the fairness and equity of our process

clearly are important and require prompt action to deal with an obvious inconsistency in an admissions

strategy based on individual merit.

Indeed, in retrospect, this decision regarding

legacy should have been part of my December 3rd announcement and because it was not, Texas A&M has

suffered unfortunate negative publicity. I take full responsibility for that.

Today’s

announcement brings greater consistency and equity to our admissions decision making process. We will

continue our review.