Rally cries for affirmative action

by Megan Kuhn and Kim Smith
Staff Writers

CINCINNATI – A new generation of civil rights activists took their message of education integration to the streets yesterday.

"We’re gonna fight until hell freezes over," said Robert Richardson, University of Cincinnati student body president. "Then we’re gonna fight on ice."

Two groups, The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and Integration, and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary, organized the rally in response to two affirmative action lawsuits, said Tanya Troy, BAMN outreach coordinator. The court cases, Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, initially scheduled for a hearing on Oct. 23 in the Sixth Circuit Court in Cincinnati, were postponed until Dec. 6.

The cases question the constitutionality of affirmative action. In a 1997 case, Jennifer Gratz brought a lawsuit against the University of Michigan President Lee Bollinger. Gratz, a white student, claimed that less-qualified minority students were given preferential treatment in the admissions process.

When the court rules, the judgment will bind all states within the circuit, including Ohio. OU will have to comply with the precedent that follows, said Curt Levy, director of legal and public affairs at the Center for Individual Rights, which is the law firm representing Gratz, as well as Barbara Grutter, who also is challenging the University of Michigan’s policies.

Among the crowd of more than 100 minority and white protesters, OU junior Stephanie Burrows marched from the UC campus to downtown’s Fountain Square, which is where the march culminated into an affirmative action rally.

She said she was surprised by how many people came to protest that the cases had been pushed back.

"I felt like it was a really positive experience because of the number of people there. I was kind of disappointed that it was an un-diverse crowd," Burrows said. "It was mostly minorities."

Burrows is one of many on the OU campus watching the cases closely.

If the court rules to support affirmative action, no change in OU’s admission guidelines will be needed. But if the rulings favor the plaintiffs, OU will have to review its admission guidelines to determine if any changes need to be made.

"If the outcome of the case supports the notion that race is not an appropriate consideration in admission to institutions of higher education, the university would have to find other ways to achieve its diversity goals," said William Y. Smith, OU executive assistant to the president for institutional equity. "The goal would be to craft programs that achieve diversity without being illegal. It’s important for higher education to be equally accessible to all of the population," Smith said. "The senior administration is not satisfied with the numerical level of diversity we've attained and are constantly engaged in an effort to address this issue."

The elimination of affirmative action hurt diversity in other districts in the short-run, Smith said.

After the 1996 Hopwood v. Texas ruling, colleges in Texas could not use race as an admissions guideline. Although the University of Texas enacted new programs that do not use affirmative action to expand minority recruitment, the general enrollment of minority students still is below pre-Hopwood numbers, said Monty Jones, associate director for public affairs for the UT system.

Jones said UT is at a competitive disadvantage with universities able to offer financial aid based on ethnicity. Consequentially, UT has lost many minority students to other states.

Unlike schools, such as UT-Austin, which turn away many academically qualified applicants, OU’s admission guidelines allow some latitude.

"The University of Michigan has more students applying than spots available and is having to turn away a lot of students who would seemingly be admissible," said Kip Howard, OU director of undergraduate admissions. "We're not turning away lots of people who are capable of doing the work here."

Some say the use of affirmative action is not the real concern.

"The problem is that we’re reaching a point in time where we use ‘reverse discrimination’ as a rationalization," said Jessie Roberson, OU associate professor of business law. "We attack affirmative action as a remedy and never get to the problem affirmative action tried to address. Worse yet, that skewed approach to dealing with problems of race has legitimized some really ugly extreme positions. You’re not a bigot or a racist, you’re a conservative and that makes you more legitimate."

– Elizabeth Johnson contributed to this story.