Fisher Vs. Texas State University Of Texas

Measuring Up: The National Report on Higher Education stated in 2006: “Texas’ under-performance in educating its young population could limit the state’s access to a competitive workforce and weaken its economy over time.” Yet in the intervening years, Texas leaders have done nothing to reverse this downward trend, instead slashing scholarships and other resources even further.

In December 2014, The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education published “Rethinking the Admission Process.” This article was written by Frank DiMaria, who takes a look at the research of the former president of the University of Wyoming, Robert Sternberg. DiMaria explains Sternberg’s stance against the current admissions process. Sternberg has research that depicts, “GPA, standardized tests, and essays do not successfully measure the true talent of a college applicant.” He believes that the policies need to change. Sternberg offers an alternative to the current process. Sternberg has been a part of a new admissions policy testing students not just on their memorization and analytical skills, but on their creative, practical, and wisdom-based skills as well. Sternberg’s ideas stem from his experience with disadvantaged youth and their ability to adapt and overcome obstacles. Sternberg claims that students who grow up in the upper middle class tend to have an environment which better values the analytical skills that the current tests measure. He argues that, because of this, colleges may not be getting the most creative and adaptable students. He shows that some of these less privileged students are capable of handling a college workload even though they may not have been able to score as high on the SAT or other tests. DiMaria believes that through Sternberg’s Kaleidoscope policy may be a solution. The Kaleidoscope way of admissions administers tests which ask open ended

Does the Alabama statute 16-1-20.1, allowing a period of silence for meditation or voluntary prayer violate the First Amendment Establishment Clause that is applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment?

Although the Top 10 Percent Law has only been in effect for approximately two decades, the law signifies historical cases behind it. In short, Texas House Bill 588 was an immediate response to a 1996 federal court case (Barr). In 1991, the law school of University of Texas (UT) initiated a controversial admission strategy, which required distinct standards for white students versus minority students, in order to boost diverse enrollment at the school (Barr). Consequently, this affirmative action was soon criticized as unjust reverse discrimination to Anglo students (Barr). In 1996, rejected applicants filed a lawsuit against the UT – Law school, in which

he death sentence has been around for all most all of our counties history starting with hangings and execution style deaths. The Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments stand behind the death penalty in the United States until the 1960’s when people started challenging the basic legal standards if the death penalty is correct. People started seeing the death penalty as a form cruel and unusual punishment and a way of it keeping our country in the “older times” During the mid-Nineteenth Century a movement called the Abolitionist Movement started to gain the county attention (especially in the Northeast) and the death penalty started to move out of the public eye and into correctional facilities. Pennsylvania being the first state to do so in 1834. Some of the first states to abolish the death penalty were

There have been many cases before the United States Supreme Court similar to Mary Hamilton’s, including one that is currently pending. In an ongoing case, Fisher v. University of Texas (2012), Abigail Fisher, a Caucasian female, filed a lawsuit against the University because she was denied admission. Fisher argued that the University was discriminating in its selections based on race. The University argued that the factor of race in the admissions process was solely in the interest of promoting educational diversity. If the admissions of a school call for measures to be taken to ensure diversity, then the policies in place must be reviewed under a standard of strict scrutiny to determine if they are precisely tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest (oyez.org). In Fisher v. University of Texas, the examination of strict scrutiny was not sufficiently conducted and is going to be argued once more on December 9, 2015. In this situation, using the factor of race in an admissions process is

In response to the allegations, the University of Michigan asserted that their policy was designed to promote diversity and ensure “unique contributions to the character of the Law School” (Cornell University Law School, n.d.). The University of Michigan maintained that they did not employ racial quotas rather they systemically focused on improving diversity in each entering class. The University associated their policy to Regents of Uni. Cal. v. Bakke (1978) which addressed race in university admission decisions.

Ms. Fisher argued that race or ethnicity should not be a factor in the application process because it is simply unfair. The university responded that using race as a factor is only part of the admission process and is only used to ensure a large diverse group of students. The University of Texas automatically admits students in the top ten percent of high schools in the state. The school also used the affirmative action policy to admit students of other races, even with less credentials, over white students. While Ms. Fisher was not in the top ten percent of her high school, she still thought that with her GPA, performing arts, and other achievements; she would be able to attend the university.

UT made the holistic review, based on the decisions in Bakke and Grutter v. Bollinger. Those decisions establish that; universities may consider race-when in need or have interest in student body diversity. The Fifth Circuit emphasized, that UT was not looking to consider ‘race’ as a search, but a search for unique talents and backgrounds who could increase the diversity of the student body. UT needed more diversity in its campus, so they might have helped a few

The school then appealed to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 decision that the state may consider race as a factor for admittance for diversity, but only if other circumstances are

Having done so it would still need to be narrowly tailored so as not to unduly injure any associated groups or individuals. Powell determined that attaining a diverse student body in an institution of higher education was a compelling state interest. In order to be narrowly tailored to this interest, the institution should use race as a "plus" factor. The quota system that the University of California applied set aside positions for minority students and focused on having a diverse statistical surface rather than attaining actual diverse backgrounds. Rather, as was done at Harvard, it was expected that all students should be considered together and race used as a bonus for minorities that would help account for the special perspective such students could bring to the campus (Schauer 589-597). While Powell's outline for programs had plenty of dissenters, none of them ever made it to a prominent position in the court system and so, since 1978, the rules of Bakke have been the proverbial law of the land. That is, until recently.

The question of making admission decisions on the basis of race had been debated before in the Supreme Court, in the case of Grutter v. Bollinger. The University of Michigan Law School had denied the admission of Barbara Grutter, a white female. The Law School admits that it uses race as a factor in making admissions decisions because it serves a "compelling interest in achieving diversity among its student body." The court ruled in favor of the University of Michigan, because no single factor eliminated a certain applicant from being denied admission and race was seen as a factor that would help diversity in the law school. This case was referred to in the discussion phase of this hearing.

& Martinez, 2003). The Supreme Court ruled that the University of California was wrong in the way they approached a special admissions program that was open only to minority applicants (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003). The ruling argued that the special admissions program violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003). Justice Lewis Powell, Jr. stated in his opinion on the Bakke case that quotas “would hinder rather than further attainment of genuine diversity” (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003, p. 141). Justice Powell, Jr. also wrote that race is only one part of many factors that an institution can consider in truly achieving a heterogeneous student population (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003). By siding with Bakke in this case, the Supreme Court essentially outlawed the use of racial quotas in admissions processes in higher education, yet universities took this as it is okay to use race as a selective factor as long as there are no quotas (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003).

Colleges and Universities are still trying to move beyond race-based admissions. In the case of a young woman who applied to the University of Washington who talks about her home life with her father abusing her mother and her mother abusing drugs. This essay from the high school senior impacted the readers into helping to ban affirmative action from university admissions. In February, Florida joined the growing number of states that struck affirmative action from admissions. California in 1996, voters eliminated race-based admissions policies, and the same year, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did the same in Texas in Hopwood vs. State of Texas. The University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Virginia have elected to significantly reduce the role of

In Hopwood v. Texas, Cheryl Hopwood along with three other caucasian law school applicants challenged the affirmative action program at the University of Texas Law School. She claimed that she was denied admission to the law school despite being better qualified than many admitted minority candidates. Hopwood along with Douglas Carvell, Kenneth Elliott, and David Rogers, all had better combined LSAT and grade scores than 36 of the 43 Latinos admitted, and 16 of the 18 blacks admitted (Hentoff 1). Judge Sparks ruled that the University could continue to use the racial preferences which had been the issue in the case. In the ruling, he wrote that it was "regrettable that affirmative action programs are still needed in our society", and that they were still "a necessity" until society overcomes its tradition of institutional racism (Hopwood V. Texas 1). After the four plaintiffs appealed the case, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, "the University of Texas School of Law may not use race as a factor in deciding which applicants to admit in order to achieve a diverse student body, to combat the perceived effects of a hostile environment at the law school, to alleviate the law school's poor reputation in the minority community, or to eliminate any present effects of past discrimination by actors other than the law school"( Hopwood V. Texas 1). The University appealed the decision, but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review, making the case the law of the land in Louisiana, Mississippi, and