I-200 Flap Ends as Footnote in Voter Pamphlet

Thursday, September 17, 1998 - Seattle Times

by Seattle Times staff

The flap over the voter-pamphlet statement for Initiative 200 has ended in a footnote.

After weeks of wrestling with the dispute, Secretary of State Ralph Munro yesterday said the state will print the statement with a footnote, leaving it to voters to decide what to believe.

The disputed I-200 statement features Katuria Smith's reverse discrimination lawsuit against the University of Washington School of Law, and concludes: "the school's Dean has said that she would have been admitted if she were black."

Roland Hjorth, the dean, allegedly made the remark in a conversation with nationally syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff at an April 20 luncheon attended by 14 law-school faculty members.

Hjorth and a dozen faculty members swear he did not make the remark. Hentoff swears he did.

The secretary of state initially accepted the statement for I-200, which would roll back state and local affirmative action programs, but wavered when Hjorth complained. I-200 chairman John Carlson responded by adding even more disputed material to his statement.

After failing to negotiate a settlement, Munro took the matter to court, but on Friday the judge kicked it back to him.

So the state's pamphlet, to be mailed to 2.9 million voters next month, will include the original version of the I-200 statement with a footnote saying both sides have sworn statements backing their version of the conversation.

If approved, the initiative would ban preferences based on race, ethnicity and gender in state and local public employment, contracting and education, ending affirmative action as it is now practiced.

Return to the I-200 page.
Return to the Affirmative Action and Diversity Page

Carl Gutiérrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu