Students
find admissions decision disappointing Students
find admissions decision disappointing
Wednesday, March 28, 2001
By GEOFF LARCOM NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Jamala McFadden stood in the middle of the elegant courtyard of the University of Michigan Law School Tuesday, struggling to find the words to express her disappointment. Late Tuesday morning, the message had come from Law School Dean Jeffrey Lehman: Federal judge Bernard Friedman had ruled that the U-M law school's affirmative action admissions policies were unconstitutional.
Lehman had told McFadden and other students that U-M would press for a stay of the injunction, but the sting of uncertainty remained for McFadden and other law students - black and white - who expressed surprise at the ruling while saying it would whittle into the vitality of the law school experience.
"This is such a depressing day for us," said McFadden, who last weekend completed her one-year term as president of the U-M Black Law Students Alliance. She came to Ann Arbor from the University of Illinois, and before that had attended an all-black high school in Chicago. She is an executive editor of the Michigan Law Review and is set to clerk for a federal judge after graduating this spring. McFadden said she relishes U-M's blend of students. Central to her development here, she said, was the understanding that she was not alone in her background and viewpoints.
That knowledge made her and her classmates more willing to express their opinion, which led to richer classroom discussions. "Race is an important part of who I am," McFadden said. Jennifer Taylor, a white, second-year student from Birmingham, said that a diverse class that offers different perspectives simply produces better lawyers.
"How can you practice law if you are only educated in one stream of thought?" she asked. "If you are person who is supposed to protect the law, you need diversity to learn the full context." Mike St. John, a third-year student from Royal Oak, told of the time his constitutional law class examined how the same law can play out in different ways for different races, and recalled how his mix of classmates contributed varying ideas.
Amy Harwell, another third-year student, said that she is her class's only member from Arkansas. She recalled living in the Law Quad her first year, of meeting people from all over the country as she dined with them each day. Like several others, first-year student Joel Flake expressed surprise that a judge had ruled against U-M in the law school admissions case after the university had prevailed in December in a ruling deciding a similar case involving the U-M undergraduate admissions process.
Flake noted how Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell's opinion in the landmark Bakke case, which said diversity could be one of several factors in admissions, cited the example of an Idaho farm boy, "which I am," Flake said. He also is a Mormon, with two children and a wife. "Diversity does contribute to the classroom," he said, citing his own input and that of several black students who come from the south side of Chicago.
Virginia Rosa, a second-year student from Riverside, Calif., said she turned down an offer of admission from Cal-Berkeley, largely because the school's student body is now primarily white after affirmative action admissions policies were abolished in that state. She spoke of the numerous "basement groups" at the U-M Law School - the various student organizations such as McFadden's that represent a spectrum of activities and viewpoints, and have lower-floor offices in the sprawling complex.
"It not about (test scores)," Rosa said. "You can't pigeonhole people here. Your success has so much more to do with the person you are."
Reporter Geoff Larcom can be reached by e-mail at glarcom@annarbornews.com or at (734) 994-6838.
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