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By Sharron Hannon
shannon@uga.edu
U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield of Savannah ruled in late July that three white female applicants denied admission to the University of Georgia in 1999 should be offered admission for the fall 2000 semester. In making the ruling, Edenfield said that UGA’s admissions process that was in effect in 1999 “violated Title VI and Title IX by intentionally discriminating against them based on race and gender.”
Under the university’s admissions process, the majority of applicants are admitted solely on academic criteria. But additional factors are used to make decisions about candidates with similar academic credentials in determining the final 10-15 percent of the class. In 1999, those factors included, among others, whether a prospective student was a Georgia resident, the child of an alumnus or the first in the family to seek a college education. Also considered was a student’s race and gender, which Edenfield found to be unconstitutional.
The university dropped the use of gender (which gave a degree of preference to male applicants) as a consideration for applicants for the fall 2000 entering class. In addition, two new factors were used this year in the final round of decision making to provide some boost to students who were from economically disadvantaged counties or low-performing Georgia public high schools but who had nevertheless achieved academically. “The idea is to offer a degree of reward to those who have done well despite difficult circumstances,” says Scott Weinberg, chair of the Faculty Admissions Committee of University Council.
UGA’s admissions criteria are reviewed annually by the admissions office, the Faculty Admissions Committee and the president of the university. The Edenfield ruling pertains to the criteria used to make admissions decisions for the 1999 freshman class.
“This is yet another step in what promises to be a long process,” said UGA President Michael F. Adams when the ruling was announced. “We respect the court and we want UGA admissions to comply with federal law. We also want to be as aggressive as possible within the law in attracting people of all races and backgrounds to the University of Georgia.”
At press time an announcement had not yet been made as to whether the Edenfield ruling would be appealed and what its impact would be on admissions policy for the class entering in fall 2001.
Nationally, a number of lawsuits have challenged admissions policies based on race and/or gender. The most recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the issue of the use of race in admissions is the 1978 decision in Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke, in which the late Justice Lewis Powell wrote that admissions officers could take race into account as one of several factors in evaluating candidates. In 1996, however, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a ruling by a district court in Texas that a white woman and three other applicants to the University of Texas Law School had suffered reverse discrimination in being denied admission.
BACKGROUND ON UGA ADMISSIONS
From Georgia Magazine:
www.uga.edu/gm/1299/FeatCry.html
www.uga.edu/gm/999/FeatRace.html
From Columns:
www.uga.edu/columns/000313/campnews3.html
www.uga.edu/columns/000221/digest.html
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