Affirmative Action Case Study In College

Affirmative Action has become one of the most controversial issues regarding college admissions. It is an issue that exposes profiling to its highest extent. Race, gender and income now become vital factors in education opportunities. Affirmative Action is the procedure that is used as a criteria in admissions that will increase the points a college applicant receives on their application evaluation based on the previous factors. Whether race should be considered in the admission of a college applicant, is without a doubt a must in all states. Affirmative Action definitely will improve the opportunities of a minority student applying at a university but it will not be the deciding factor. When

So when Abigail Fisher wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and attend the university she would have to make it on her own, with no special consideration (Nieli, 2013). The state of Texas has enacted the Top Ten Percent Law that gives students graduating in the Top Ten Percent of their high school automatic admission to any Texas public school. Unfortunately, Fisher failed to meet this requirement, and hoped to get admitted through this alternative admission track that takes academic achievement, extracurricular activities, and numerous other things including race and ethnicity. Considering her GPA and SAT scores were higher than most of the students admitted in this fashion, she felt she would easily gain admission this way. When that didn’t happen she felt if she had been a black or Hispanic student and had her same credentials she would have easily been accepted. Fishers’ attorney argued that the University had not been in compliance with the constitutional review. (Nieli, 2013)After losing two appeals, both in the district court and circuit court they appealed to the Supreme Court. The University of Texas gave great transparency in its admission process and gave other universities an outline on how to justify the need for their Affirmative Action Policies. In regards to their policy the University of Texas highlighted the need to deal with students feeling racially isolated or alone. In 2013, the time of Fishers’ litigation African American Students made up less than 5% while Latinos made up about 15% of the student body as compared to Latinos 38% state representation (Hawkins, 2016)Texas’s argued institutions need to leverage the educational benefit of diversity, the need for polices such as affirmative action exists as a result of the lingering effect of discrimination, and that these policies are helping the underrepresented minority groups

In 2003, the Supreme Court issued its ruling on a case challenging the University of Michigan’s undergraduate affirmative action program, ultimately declaring the scheme unconstitutional. The admission scheme was based generally on a 150 point scale system in which the Office of Admission assigned points based on a number of factors, including high school grades, standardized test scores, high school quality, alumni strength, and leadership; if a student fell within the 100-150 point range, he or she would be admitted to the school. However, an applicant automatically received a bonus of 20 points of the 100 needed to guarantee admission if he or she possessed any one of the following “miscellaneous” factors: membership in an underrepresented racial or ethnic minority (which included African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans), attendance to a predominantly minority or disadvantaged high school, or recruitment for athletics. And yet, even though the Court struck down this scheme by holding it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, it did so on the basis that the University of Michigan scheme itself was too broad and thus discriminatory on its face; it did not strike down the notion of affirmative action in any way (Gratz v. Bollinger, 2003). In fact, the same day this ruling came down, the Supreme Court issued another ruling that upheld the University of Michigan Law

RULE: Race-based affirmative action as a plus factor in the admissions process of an applying student to public universities and other public institutions of high education is constitutional. Given that the program is “narrowly tailored.” This allows schools to determine if there is a “critical mass” of a given race, and determine if an applicant if admitted would be beneficial in creating a diverse learning environment.

Recently the Supreme Court made a ruling that gave schools across the country a higher standard to abide by when using affirmative action when making admission decisions. This case was brought to attention by Abigail Fisher, a white women rejected by the University of Texas. The verdict was a tame one and ruled in favor of Fisher with admissions requiring ““no workable race-neutral alternatives” when a student’s acceptance status is determined. This avoided much debate compared to the capacity the Court has for changing the nation.

The Supreme Courts ruling does not align with the U.S. political culture and equality as our founding fathers intended. Equality means that people have the same opportunity to compete and achieve in this country regardless of race, gender, or religion. The students that work hard and have the higher grades and test scores should be the ones who get admitted to the university and race should not be a factor. In order to promote racial equality, race shouldn’t be considered and everyone should be given the same opportunity to work hard and study to achieve a spot a top

There is an examination of the admission rates that demonstrates the mechanism by which the freshman pool of African American and Latino students has shrunk so dramatically” (Patricia Gandara). In California, these supposed benefits of affirmative action are not being seen. A study run by Liliana Garces “documented a 5% decline (from 2,010 to 1,906 students) from 1995 to 1996” of the minority group that was attending “five selective public law schools in California, Texas, and Washington” (Garces). These statistics help notify the public that affirmative action in these few states is actually having a reverse effect on these people, and in this situation affirmative action is creating no benefits for minorities. A similar study performed at UC Berkeley stated that “even as Chicano/Latinos increased their representation in the applicant pool at UC Berkeley from approximately 13 percent in 1995 to 19 percent in 2010, they experienced… nearly [a] 75 percent decline in the rate of admissions compared to just over 40 percent decline for whites” (Gandara). The facts prove that affirmative action at prestigious colleges is not helping minorities become accepted. It is a useless effort that the government is wasting their time on. Therefore concluding that affirmative action within this area is useless and leads many to wonder if we should even waste time on the

Newspaper headlines and public forums demand educational reform with growing frequency. Race-sensitive admissions policies are often at the center of these debates. For example, according to the Los Angeles Times on March 21, 2001, the Los Angeles Community College district trustees are scheduled to vote for a resolution to support the University of California’s move to reinstate affirmative action in its admissions policies. This reinstatement has visible student support as seen in the March 15, 2001 rallies at the UC Regent’s meeting in which over 1,000 supporters of affirmative action came out to voice their opinion. This activity closely follows two other perceived victories for affirmative action proponents when two recent court

California's decision in 1996 to outlaw the use of race in public college admissions was widely viewed as the beginning of the end for affirmative action at public universities all over the United States. But in the four years since Californians passed Proposition 209, most states have agreed that killing affirmative action outright would deepen social inequality by denying minority citizens access to higher education. The half-dozen states that are actually thinking about abandoning race-sensitive

This idea of admission “quotas” was short lived however and in 1978 the Supreme Court in the case of Regents of University of California v. Bakke ruled that colleges cannot use racial quotas because it violated the Equal Protection Clause, but race can be used as one factor for college admission (Week). Affirmative action originated as a type of redistribution policy or tool to aid in the social and economic mobility of minorities. In regards to college admissions, it was implemented as a way to increase the number of minorities accepted to universities, for reasons of giving them the opportunity for economic advancement by earning a degree. Over time President Kennedy’s “without regard” standards have given birth to policies that allow admissions officers to treat applicants “with regard” to race, which has been justified as expanding opportunities for the underprivileged and more often fostering diversity. Today the term “affirmative action” is a nice word for racial preferences.

This figure is up from 35 percent in 1991. Affirmative action in hiring and higher education—an institutional remedy to structural discrimination and another key gain of the movement in the 1960s—continues to suffer defeats. The latest of these came in April of last year when the Supreme Court upheld a ban on the practice in Michigan’s public universities. Between 2006—when the ban was passed—and 2012, African American enrollment at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor plummeted by 33 percent while overall student enrollment increased by 10 percent.

Have you ever heard about CTE? CTE is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes (and others) with a history of repetitive brain trauma, including symptomatic concussions as well as asymptomatic sub concussive hits to the head. An article about the dangers of CTE was recently posted on CNN.com by Jason Hanna, Debra Goldschmidt, and Kevin Flower.

According to the 14th Amendment, The Equal Protection Clause forbids any state from making a law that infringes upon a person’s right (cite the Constitution). In other words, laws must treat a person as equally as others in similar situations. The Supreme Court discovered that the case hadn’t gone through the “strict scrutiny” test, so it was sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for further review. The Court of Appeals determined in a 2-1 verdict that the university was justified in its use of affirmative action (Affirmative Action Timeline). In the aftermath of the case, universities and medical schools now face complications justifying their affirmative action plans. While many people oppose affirmative action policies, there are experts who defend the

The mood that, the author, Edgar Allen Poe sets in “The Cask of Amontillado” is considered ominous, sinister, and even gruesome. The story starts off the reader with the main character, Montresor, explaining that he will get revenge on his enemy with the words "At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled --but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity". This sentence explains that Montresor is certain that he will get revenge on Fortunato by making him suffer in a very painful way. The factor of creepiness increases when Montresor gets Fortunato to follow him into a catacomb described by Poe with "We had passed through long

Many claim that global warming is obvious and that all arguments against global warming fall. The problem is that what is “obvious” often isn’t true. “A gradual increase in the overall temperature of the earth's atmosphere generally attributed to the greenhouse effect caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and other pollutants.” This is the Webster dictionary definition of Global Warming, which basically says that due to an overflow of harmful and hazardous chemicals in the air that it is creating a danger zone for the earth. This is because these chemicals are increasing the earths’ temperature. Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist was the first person to claim that in 1896 that fossil fuel combustion may