Author: mopress

Chronicle Daily News, Feb. 13, 2004

“I am outraged that

opponents of affirmative action would go to these lengths to mislead people, to collect information

that they will use to attack affirmative action,” said Ms. Berry, who was appointed to the commission

by President Jimmy Carter and has led the panel since 1993. “It is illegal, immoral, and unethical, in

my view, for a special assistant to a commissioner to send a survey to colleges and universities that

will be led to believe that this is the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights undertaking the survey.”

“I hope that colleges and universities will not respond to it,” Ms. Berry said.

The survey, which was printed on commission letterhead, was sent to the colleges’

presidents by Christopher A. Jennings, a special assistant to Peter N. Kirsanow. Mr. Kirsanow, a

Republican, was appointed to the commission by President Bush and has frequently criticized race-

conscious college admissions in articles written for the National Review. In an interview Thursday, Mr.

Jennings said he was “just acting on Commissioner Kirsanow’s authority,” and “this is not an

official act of the commission as a whole.”

SGA severs ties with FCIC due to diversity
By James Twine
Published:

Friday, February 13, 2004

The Texas A&M Student Senate severed ties with the Faculty

Committed to an Inclusive Campus (FCIC), due to differences in race-based admissions

ideals.

The two organizations had scheduled a Feb. 18 diversity march before they

realized their agenda differences, said Student Services Chair John Mathews.

Although

both organizations support diversity, the FCICsupports race-based admissions and SGA opposes race being

a factor in admissions criteria, Mathews said…. The Student Senate has authorized its diversity

team to organize a march of its own to be called Aggie March for Merit, beginning at 3:15 p.m. on Feb.

18.

The SGA march supports the admissions policy instituted by Gates as well as the

progress it will represent for diversity at A&M.

Mathews said he was disturbed because

the FCIC withheld information from SGA and others.

“So many people had united for this

cause, and to now realize that FCIC was cause, and to now realize that FCIC was hiding behind this

secret agenda is upsetting,” he said.[sic]

The bill commended Gates’ admissions

policy.

“(Gates’) admissions policy will lead to greater diversity at A&M, and we

fully support his bold decision to affirm the dignity and worth of every person by making individual

merit the only criterion for admission and refusing to institutionalize discrimination on the basis of

race, legacy, sexual orientation or any other demographic characteristic unrelated to individual

merit,” according to the bill.

New Position to Aid Student Retention
By Bart Shirley

Multicultural

Services is seeking to fill the position of assistant director, formerly known as coordinator of

student retention, who will be in charge of student success programs.

Student success

programs are efforts by the Multicultural Services office to aid all freshmen in their pursuit of

graduation, said Megan Palsa, assistant director of Multicultural Services. They offer a year-long

program that provides transitional help to new students.

“(The new administrator will)

look at all the data to see where we’re headed, ” Palsa said. Retention has long been a concern for

Texas A&M. Though 16 percent of the student body is composed of minority students, A&M still has

trouble shedding its homogenous image in the minds of prospective students, said Mark Weichold,

associate provost for undergraduate programs and academic services.
“Historically, from retention

and graduation rates, students of color are lower,” Palsa said.

Minority students are

statistically more at risk than white students of never crossing the stage at Reed Arena, Palsa said.

Sixty-five percent of minority students entering A&M eventually graduate, compared with 77 percent of

white students.
“Clearly, there’s no one answer,” Weichold said. “Some of the answers are not

just academic. It’s going to take the collaboration of many offices on

campus.”

Weichold said his office is working to get an indication of students who are

at risk for not returning for their sophomore year. His office is using several assessment tools, such

as the CSI and the NSE, to make that determination. Many programs exist to assist in retention

alongside the Multicultural Services office, he said.

“The Multicultural Services has

been a big part of our retention efforts,” Weichold said.
The discrepancy in student retention is

also one of the reasons for the hiring of the new vice president for diversity, Dr. James A. Anderson,

Palsa said.

“Dr. Anderson will work with Multicultural Services,” said Rodney

McClendon, chief of staff. “He will (also) be working with all colleges in regard to retention.”

ANN ARBOR, Michigan (AP) — Seven months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the

University of Michigan’s undergraduate affirmative action policy, the number of applications from

blacks, Hispanics and American Indians is down 23 percent from the same time last year.
And the

number of those admitted is down 30 percent.

Officials said the figures are only

preliminary and thousands more applications will continue to be reviewed in a process the school hopes

to finish by the first week of April. The application deadline was February 1.

“We’ve

only accepted a fraction of the class we’ll ultimately admit,” associate director of admissions Chris

Lucier said Monday.

Overall, applications for this fall’s incoming freshman class are

down 18 percent, according to the preliminary data compiled February 5 and released to The Associated

Press Monday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Despite the decrease

in applications, the total number of students admitted so far — nearly 8,600 — is down only 1 percent

from the same time last year. The university plans to admit 12,000 to 13,000 students and hopes that

will yield an enrollment of 5,545 for this fall.

Last June, the high court upheld an

affirmative action policy at the University of Michigan law school but struck down the university’s

undergraduate formula as too rigid. It awarded admission points based on race.

The

University of Michigan adopted a new application that still considers race, but does not award points,

and includes new short-answer questions and an optional essay — changes that meant applications were

made available to students about a month later than usual, stalling the start of the admissions

process.

Lucier said essay answers are “providing the breadth and the richness of

information that we really were hoping to get from students.” But the questions also mean additional

work for high school seniors, which officials say likely contributes to the lower number of

applications.

Admissions Director Ted Spencer said minority students and their families

may not want to thrust themselves into the center of the debate over affirmative

action.

“The residual kinds of impact of all this discussion and dialogue, particularly

from the other side of this issue, that diversity is bad, it makes a lot of students think, ‘Well,

maybe I don’t want to be put into that sort of environment,”‘ Spencer said.

The

university said it has reviewed 44 percent of applications from minority students and 69 percent of

non-minority applications — indicating minority students’ applications have been arriving later in

the admissions cycle.

Ohio State University, which also revised a similar point-based

admissions policy in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, said applications from American Indians are

holding steady and Hispanic applications are up 6.2 percent from the same time last year, but

applications from blacks are down 18.6 percent.

“The mere conversation in the minority

community seems to be what lawyers call a chilling effect,” said Mabel Freeman, assistant vice

president for undergraduate admissions.