[1411] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Wither MIT's AA? [re: Chronicle article]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jimmy C Wu)
Mon Jun 23 16:55:55 2003
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 15:30:15 -0400
From: Jimmy C Wu <jimmbswu@ALUM.MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
You can see the opinions at:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/02slipopinion.html
I have summarized the opinions below and discussed the implication of this
set of decisions for MIT's affirmative action program.
The Court upheld the compelling interest in diversity, as defined by Justice
Powell in the Bakke case, by
5-4 in the law school case, and struck down the point-based system of the
undergrad by 6-3. In the law school opinion, it also set out a sun-set
provision of 25 years for current affirmative action program.
In the law school case, the Court ruled in favor of the school because,
first, its program has a clear justification in its definition, referencing
the compelling interest in diversity, and 2ndly, it routinely takes in some
non-minority applicants who are less "qualified" than the minority students
it accepted, evidencing the "narrowly tailored" criterium Powell set. The
Court also made the case that law schools, producing leaders of tomorrow,
needs to keep its doors visibly open to all groups of American ppl. The
Court currently does not see any need for affirmative action programs 25
years from now.
In the undergraduate case, the Court rejected UM's contention that its size
precludes a narrowly-tailored AA program, "The fact that the implementation
of a program capable of providing individualized consideration might present
administrative challenges does not render constitutional an otherwise
problematic system." The blanket 20-pt bonus is too broad and does not
afford the individual scrutiny the law school AA program provides.
Viewed in this light, we can conclude that the current MIT undergrad AA
program would fail the "narrowly tailored" criterium. The MIT undergrad
program, as when I was a student from 1997-2002 and as I understood it,
divided the applicant pool into 3 groups: 1. academic superstars, 2.
qualified, and 3. not-qualified. Group 1 gets admitted. All of the females
and minority in group 2 also gets admitted. Then, the non-minority
applicants in group 2 are placed in a merit list and admitted until they
fill up the class. Under this admission system, we have the MIT anomaly
that Asian females make up the 2nd biggest group on campus, right behind
white males. This system is too broad and does not provide the strict
scrutiny a narrowly tailored program requires. Hopefully Marilee Jones
agrees with this interpretation and ends this AA program before someone
brings a case.
For further details on strict scrutiny and "narrowly tailored", please refer
to the opinions linked above.
So that was that,
Jimmy Wu
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation on the use of the mailing lists mit-talk, all-talk,
mit-news, housing-talk, and the mit-talk Zephyr class is available at:
http://web.mit.edu/institvte/talk/
