While the affirmative action case facing the U.S. Supreme Court only concerns the University of Texas directly, indirect effects of the ruling on university admissions could change policies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, depending on the court’s decision.
In the case, a white student applied to the University of Texas and was denied admission. Following her rejection, she challenged the university’s use of “racial preferences” in its admissions system. Texas’ current policy states they take race into account in admission, among many other factors. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the case Oct. 10.
According to Provost Paul DeLuca, UW-Madison uses a “holistic” admission policy, which admits students based on a number of factors, including economic background and first generation college student status as well as race and ethnicity.
But DeLuca said if the court decides to change the current affirmative action laws in the U.S., UW-Madison will lose valuable diversity.
“[The university wants] a population of students that is highly representative of a diverse population of individuals,” DeLuca said. “If you go to a purely simple metric, no matter what the metric is, you will not have that.”
Political Science professor Donald Downs said there is a “fairly decent chance” the court will strike down Texas’ admissions policy, since the most likely deciding justice, Anthony Kennedy, tends to vote against affirmative action policies.
While it is not certain how the university will be directly affected by the outcome of the court’s decision, it “could affect the university’s policy dramatically,” according to DeLuca.
Downs also said in the event the court strikes down Texas’ admission policy, it would likely offer the university other methods of admitting students that do not revolve around race.
“If they strike it down, they are probably going to talk about how there are alternative ways for the university to proceed that will not overtly involve race,” Downs said. “And [the alternatives] will nevertheless be conducive to creating racial as well as socio-economical diversity.”
Downs said the university may be better off adopting a plan similar to one the University of Texas had in the past, which stated any student who was in the top 10 percent of their high school class was automatically accepted.
Therefore, since some schools are predominantly minorities, diversity would continue to be present and possibly grow on campus, according to Downs.
