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By Sharron Hannon
The University of Georgia will continue to apply a variety of factors, including race but excluding gender, in making admissions decisions for a portion of the freshman class of 2000. Some 80 to  90 percent of the class will be admitted solely on academic criteria--such as high school grade point average and scores on standardized tests (either the SAT or ACT). But additional criteria will continue to be used in making decisions for the remaining percentage of the class. A new factor will be that admission will be extended to one valedictorian and one salutatorian from each Georgia high school fully accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
The admissions policy was announced by President Michael F. Adams at the first fall meeting of the University Council Sept. 30 and follows in-depth discussions with senior administrators, faculty leadership and educational, political and alumni leaders both within Georgia and out of state.
The university’s admissions policy initially was challenged in a lawsuit filed in 1997 by attorney Lee Parks, who said he wanted to see race eliminated as an admissions factor. In July of this year, U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield, while dismissing that suit for lack of standing, nonetheless advised it was his opinion that the university “cannot constitutionally justify the affirmative use of race in its admissions decisions.” Parks since has filed two additional lawsuits challenging both race and gender as admissions factors.
For a decade and a half, ending in 1987, University System of Georgia institutions were under a federal court order to diversify the racial composition of their student bodies. In recent years, the legal landscape has shifted. In 1996, a district court judge in Texas ruled in favor of a white woman named Cheryl Hopwood, who claimed she had suffered reverse discrimination when her application to the University of Texas law school was denied. The next year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of that ruling because the law school had altered its admissions policy in the intervening years since the suit was first brought.
The last Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action in admissions was the 1978 Bakke case, which involved a white student who claimed he had been wrongfully excluded from the medical school at the University of California-Davis to make room for minority applicants. The deciding opinion, written by Justice Lewis Powell, condemned the use of quotas but ruled that admissions officers could take race into account as one of several factors in evaluating candidates in order to work toward a diverse student body.
“All of us have a responsibility to deal with the legacy of segregation as an issue in both academe and government,” Adams told the University Council. “My commitment to providing opportunity to all is fundamental, and under my leadership the University of Georgia will remain committed to this basic right.”
Adams defended the use of multiple admissions factors as a typical procedure at many highly selective universities. Last year, some 13,500 students applied for spots in UGA’s freshman class of just over 4,000. While most admissions decisions were made solely on academic criteria, admissions staff and the faculty admissions committee considered additional factors before making final decisions for the last 10 percent of the class. For the fall 1999 freshman class, those factors included race and gender, plus whether students were Georgia residents, participated in extracurricular activities, worked during the summer or school year, had relatives who were alumni, or were the first generation in their family to attend college.
The factors used in admissions decisions are evaluated year to year, and for the class of 2000 gender will no longer be one of the factors. In discussions with administrators and faculty, the decision was made to discontinue the practice of giving a slight edge to male applicants, who make up less than half of the current student body.
But race is a different matter, Adams told the University Council. “Those who argue that the only fair method is a statistical ranking of applicants’ academic records miss an important point. True fairness also includes a professional assessment of unique family situations, the schools the student has attended, the community he or she came from, and whether applicants had to overcome economic hardships to build a record of academic achievement,” he said. “These things are not nearly so quantifiable as a GPA and an SAT score, yet they are important indicators of that applicant’s chances for success.”
Adams emphasized that no one factor can secure admission, but that the combination of factors used allows subjective assessment of students who bring additional qualities to the student body and have equal academic qualifications.
Adams said he does not expect the admissions policy to meet with universal approval. “Everyone is expecting the state, the University System and the University of Georgia to develop a solution that our peers in Texas, California and Michigan also have been seeking but have not found as they travel this same road,” he said. “There is no panacea--no perfect solution. However, I believe this course of action to be a responsible one. We cannot know what the legal outcome will be, but we want to do the right thing.”
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