Admissions Test: The anti-Affirmative Action Backlash Produces New Attitudes
Toward Getting into College
Admissions Test: The anti-Affirmative Action Backlash Produces New Attitudes
Toward Getting into CollegeBY CHRISTINE GRANADOS
Conflicting and premature statistics recently reported by mainstream publications muddle an already complex picture of minority students in post-secondary education.. These reports, along with the 1995 decision of the Regents of the University of California to discontinue any special consideration of ethnicity, race, and gender as factors in admission, the passage of Proposition 209 in California, and the Hopwood ruling of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals have combined to create uncertainty about the future of Latino student representation at the nation's universities.
U.S. News & World Report and the New York Times reported that minority-student enrollment held steady and in some instances increased slightly in 1997. However, reports concerning minority enrollment at the University of Texas showed a sharp drop of 52 percent after the Hopwood case was interpreted by Attorney General Dan Morales to mean that Affirmative Action programs were illegal. Many university officials and Affirmative Action supporters say it is still too early to speculate on the effects of anti-Affirmative Action measures in California and Texas. "Do not be deceived by numbers that are put in ways that project a rosy picture because if you scratch behind the surface they will project another," warns Antonio R. Flores, president of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), after looking at statistics published by U.S. News & World Report. "It's too early to took at numbers. Take a look at the UC-Berkeley law school numbers and you will see a drop in enrollment. But notice that there is an increase in minority enrollment when all graduate schools are lumped together," says Flores.
The University of California-Berkeley fall registration on-line files showed a total of 144 new Hispanic students enrolled in fourteen graduate schools, compared to 1,317 white non-Hispanics. Hispanics reported dismal numbers in business administration, with only ten students; chemistry had three; and engineering seventeen compared to their white non-Hispanic counterparts who numbered 141, 68, and 174, respectively. Flores points out that California has one of the largest populations of Hispanics in the nation, with more than 7 million. When looking at graduate program enrollment numbers, "144 is not even a drop in the bucket," he says. The UC system's growth in minority applicants was helped by many factors, such as population growth, cost, students of other races who declined to state their ethnicity (which increased by 200 percent in 1998), and the other intangibles that lead students to apply to a college, according to a New York Times report published in January.
The U.S. News story also reported a significant increase in minority enrollment at the University of Houston. That increase, however, is due to a combination of an overwhelmingly positive environment for African Americans that is conducive to Affirmative Action and the growing population of Latinos, says Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). He was pleasantly surprised to read these reports but quickly added, "We cannot be lulled into complacency by exceptions, because overall these numbers paint a negative picture." What Yzaguirre refers to is the fact that in Texas, a state that has more than 4 million Hispanic residents, only 154 students were admitted to undergraduate programs and 39 were admitted into the master's program at the University of Houston in 1997. At the University of Texas at Austin, 807 Latino freshmen and 75 graduate students were admitted.
What doesn't get reported is that in addition to gross underrepresentation of Hispanics in universities, severe inequities still exist in elementary and secondary education for minority children compared to non-Latino white children. These inequities directly affect the enrollment of Latinos in college. For example, many young Latino students are encouraged in the ninth grade to take "math for living" instead of algebra and college track courses, says Flores.
Annette Sandoval remembers all too well the track she was encouraged to take at a Santa Ana, California, public school. "I was told by a counselor in junior high school to focus on finding a guy with a bright future," recalls Sandoval, a 33-year-old author. "We took our SATs in seventh and eighth grade, and because they lost my eighth-grade transcripts they took my seventh-grade test scores, which were low, and placed me in basic individual math and English classes my freshman year of high school. 1 loved those classes because all of the fun kids were thereÑall the Latinos and blacks. The next year they stuck me into the smart kid classes (because she scored high on her SATs), filled with Americanos, all Anglos. It was complete cultural shock for me. These were classes with good teachers, who called you by your first name. We actually had to do homework and read Shakespeare. I was in turmoil because I missed my friends, so I stopped going to school."
It is students like Sandoval who Flores is referring to when he says, "Universities need to provide adequate supportive services for upcoming freshmen who were not exposed to necessary education."If such programs had been in effect at California State Fullerton University when Sandoval attended she might have finished her university studies. "I never acquired the study skills or discipline that was necessary for university life," she says. "So I was not ready for it and I dropped out." Despite the obstacles she faced in education, she is a successful author of two books, The Directory of Saints and Home-grown Healing.
Education is a lot like an athletic competition, says Flores. In a long-distance running competition, if you are fit, well trained, well fed, and well coached and compete against someone who is not well fed, coached, or equipped, who will win the race? "We have students who are going to underfunded and dilapidated city schools. How can we expect these children who come from these environments to compete against children that come from well equipped schools (and who have) parents who have gotten a higher education?" asks Flores. "Affirmative Action is trying to level the playing field. It recognizes realities and is trying to do something about it."
Far from a life of privilege, Sandoval's father "jumped the fence" from Mexico and worked for a convent, which sponsored his citizenship so that he could bring his wife to the U.S. "with dignity." Sandoval eventually completed her high school education at a continuation school, where instruction was one-on-one. She attended community college, like millions of Latinos, and still remembers how intimidating the process of applying for admission was for her and many other Latinos. Dazed by a day of filling out complicated paperwork for financial aid, standing in long lines, and being attended to by rude college students, Sandoval says she "saw so many Latino students take it personally and just drop their applications in the trash and walk out. I look back at it now and realize it's all part of the process."
Universities need to establish innovative outreach programs in collaboration with elementary and secondary schools in communities as well as community colleges (for minority student recruitment and retention), says Flores. HACU is taking steps in that direction by establishing Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI), universities or colleges that have 25 percent or higher Hispanic enrollment. HACU offers Hispanic students access to post-secondary education and shares resources with the community in partnership with HSI's.
Some non-HSI universities are taking matters into their own hands. Texas A&M University is doing away with the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT), an entrance exam required by the state of Texas, as a criterion for admission to medical school at four campuses. Instead, the university is identifying high school students who live in rural or medically underserved areas, who make good grades, and who plan to attend school at one of these A&M schools‹Corpus Christi, Laredo, Kingsville, and Prairie View. Students who are selected will be required to maintain a 3.5 grade point average on a scale of 4.0 and will be automatically admitted to medical school. This approach not only ensures a diverse student body but A&M officials say they have found that they can reach underserved patients and increase the likelihood that young physicians will return to their own communities.
The Association of American Universities (AAU), a group of 62 of the nation's leading research universities, including UC-Berkeley, UT-Austin, Brown, and Harvard, also addressed the issue of diversity in an advertisement placed in the New York Times in 1997. The resolution read: "We speak first and foremost as educators. We believe that our students benefit significantly from education that takes place within a diverse setting. In the course of their university education, our students encounter and learn from others who have backgrounds and characteristics very different from their own. As we seek to prepare students for life in the twenty-first century, the educational value of such encounters will become more important, not less, than in the past." The AAU endorses Affirmative Action considerations for college admission.
When a generally elitist group like academia endorses Affirmative Action, it's hard to understand how, anti-Affirmative Action sentiments are still sweeping the nation. One scholar believes it's a reaction to a shift in power. "I think the movement is part of a cycle," says Lillian Castillo-Speed, head librarian of the Ethnic Studies Library at UC-Berkeley. "As the gains made in the civil rights era came to fruition and more and more students and faculty of color became prominent ... a backlash was taking shape. Those who have a stake in keeping ethnic groups in the minority (whether in numbers, voting power, or economic rewards) are doing all they can (big money, big influence, big names) to maintain their idea of how things 'should' be. These power wielders use fear to gain support. Whether it's the fear of 'not being able to speak English anymore,' the fear of 'hordes of illegal criminals taking over your communities,' or the fear of 'your deserving (white) children being shut out of the university by students of color, who by definition are not as deserving,' the fear strikes deep and is reflected at the ballot box."
So while the atmosphere of exclusion and discrimination that permeates our society continues to prevent Latinos from feeling that the university is a realistic goal, Hispanics and minorities in general will continue to need Affirmative Action programs. Adds Castillo-Speed: "Our nation's universities are a model for the rest of the country, and if these institutions continue to lose their diversity it is a terrible loss for the hope for diversity nationwide."
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Carl
Gutiérrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu