Affirming Affirmative Action

by Joanne V. Creighton

This piece ran in the March 4, 1999 issue of the Mount Holyoke News.

The recent decision by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to change its posture on affirmative action, softening or diluting its commitment to recruiting and admitting students of color, comes at a difficult time. Across the nation, affirmative action is under attack. While we have yet to see the ramifications of the UMass decision, it is unfortunate that this decision may well be hailed as a victory by those who seek to dismantle affirmative action nationwide.

Having scored victories against affirmative action in public education in California, Washington state, and Texas, conservative forces are now attacking long-standing affirmative action policies at private colleges and universities. A public-policy law firm in Washington, D.C., calling itself the Center for Individual Rights and headed by Nat Hentoff and former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, recently launched a campaign which alleges that most colleges employ race-based admission policies that violate antidiscrimination laws. Placing ads in student newspapers at 15 prominent campuses across the nation, this group proclaims that "Nearly Every Elite College in America Violates the Law." Through these ads and free handbooks for students and trustees, the center encourages white students to sue their college or university for not treating them "fairly," and it attempts to intimidate trustees with the threat of litigation and liability.

The threat of suit is not idle. The campaign was launched to coincide with the center's preparation for trial of two civil cases challenging the admission policies at the University of Washington law school and the University of Michigan. The center's strategy is to divide and conquer institutions committed to diversity goals. Even though the prevailing Supreme Court ruling, the Bakke case, allows that race may be one of the factors taken into consideration in making admissions decisions, with each successive lawsuit, case law chips away at the concept of affirmative action and contributes to the growing national unease about policies and practices related to race in higher education.

This strategy may well succeed unless college and university leaders speak out for the principles that are at the heart of affirmative action. Derek Bok and William Bowen, in their data-rich study of affirmative action, The Shape of the River, have shown how positive the legacy of affirmative action has been. But clearly that legacy will not be sustained without our active vigilance and defense.

Implicitly or explicitly, educational institutions must always consider not just how and what we teach, but whom we teach and why. We take "affirmative action" to help identify students of aptitude and promise from underrepresented groups. Affirmative action is premised on the theory that educating students from diverse backgrounds will help to build a more equitable society and that a diversified student body will enhance the education of all of our students and help to prepare them to live in a multicultural world.

Colleges and universities must not be intimidated by individuals and groups who challenge our legal and thoroughly defensible admission goals and practices. We at Mount Holyoke, like many other institutions, have set increasing the diversity of the student body as an important goal. However, we do not have "quotas" for students of color, nor will a student be admitted simply because she is from an underrepresented group. Many factors are taken into consideration in deciding whether to offer admission to any student.

Critics of affirmative action zero in on test scores and argue that unqualified students of color with lower scores are given places that "rightly" belong to white students with higher SATs. This argument assumes incorrectly that test scores alone are the most important determinant in an admissions decision. But innumerable studies demonstrate that test scores alone, and even test scores in tandem with academic performance in high school, are insufficient indicators of potential for success in college and beyond. The multidimensional evaluation process which we and many other selective institutions use in admissions is more work and is messier than doing it "by the numbers," but we have found such a process to be the best — and fairest — way to select students. The Center for Individual Rights, however, seeks to pit students of color against poor white students and to discourage implementation of affirmative action and similar recruitment initiatives. If we have well-considered and equitably implemented policies, we need not be divided by these issues. We can instead use the current climate as an opportunity for reflection and reaffirmation. In order to continue to create the best educational environment for all of our students, we must vigorously defend and reinvigorate affirmative action.

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