Austin, Texas
As African American admissions at Texas’s elite
public universities go into a free-fall because of the Hopwood ruling,
a free-for-all has ensued over the interpretation of the court decision
that ended affirmative action in higher education in the state.
Conflicting legal interpretations, clarifications and legislative
attempts to undo Hopwood’s effect on minority admissions to state
colleges and universities have increased the acrimony and politics
surrounding the 1996 Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling. Texas
Attorney General Dan Morales maintains that Hopwood bans the
consideration of race in admissions, financial aid, scholarships and
recruiting. Federal officials and critics argue that previous court
rulings to desegregate higher education and promote diversity still
apply to Texas.
As the political volleys fly across the campus at the University of
Texas at Austin, where the Hopwood case originated, administrators are
frustrated because African American undergraduate and law school
applicants for the fall semester have declined by 21 percent from last
year. White applicants declined by 14 percent, according to university
figures. This fall is to be the first semester in which students will
be admitted to state universities and colleges under court-mandated
race-neutral policies.
The War of Words
A new source of confusion emerged late last month when Norma Cantu,
assistant education secretary for the Office for Civil Rights, appeared
to back away from her warning to Texas not to place too much emphasis
on the Hopwood ruling. This reversal came after U.S. Senator Phil Gramm
(R-Texas) threatened to block Education Department (ED) funding. Gramm
accused Cantu of pursuing “a political agenda” for Texas higher
education after Cantu had strongly advised Texas to give the U.S.
Supreme Court’s Bakke decision precedence over Hopwood. In the 1978
Bakke decision — one of the first so-called reverse discrimination
cases — justices allowed race as a criterion in admissions in the
interest of diversity.
In a March letter to Morales, Cantu said Hopwood applied only to
the University of Texas (UT) law school, where four white applicants
challenged a former admissions policy, and that Texas universities
could still use affirmative action to cure discriminatory practices.
