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Judge grants class-action status to admissions lawsuit
U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield granted class-action status this month to a lawsuit challenging UGA’s admissions policy.
The lawsuit, filed by Atlanta lawyer Lee Parks on behalf of four white female students who were denied admission, claims the university unconstitutionally discriminated against them by providing preferences to male and African-American applicants. Edenfield’s ruling for class-action status does not concern the substantive merits of the case, but rather is a procedural determination of whether class certification requirements were met.
Parks will now put together a letter, to be approved by Edenfield, that will be mailed to potential class action plaintiffs. They include students who sought admission as freshmen in 1997, 1998 and 1999 and were part of the applicant pool to which the admissions office applied what is known as the Total Student Index (TSI). While most students are admitted solely using an Academic Index based on high school GPA and SAT or ACT scores, additional factors are applied to those who are equally academically qualified.
UGA uses a combination of factors, evaluated year to year, in determining an applicant’s TSI score. Parks’s suit claims that the use of race and gender among those factors is unconstitutional. In the last U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the subject, the 1978 Bakke case, Justice Lewis Powell wrote that race can be taken into account as one of several admissions factors in order to work toward a diverse student body.
Other factors considered by UGA in recent years include alumni relatives, extracurricular activities, and whether applicants are from Georgia or the first in their family to attend college. President Adams has said that the combination of factors allows subjective assessment of students and is typical procedure at selective institutions.
Memorial service planned
The university community is invited to attend a memorial service Dec. 2 at 3 p.m. in the Chapel for Valentin Krumov, a UGA graduate killed this past October while working with the United Nations in Kosovo. Krumov, a Bulgarian native, completed his doctoral degree in political science and was dedicated to building a peaceful global community.
The memorial service is coordinated through the Center for International Trade and Security, International Student Life Office and friends of Krumov. For more information, contact Gary Bertsch at the Center for International Trade and Security, 542-2985, or Saehee Chang at the International Student Life Office, 542-5867.
Campaign pledge forms due
Employees who have not yet turned in their Campaign for Charities pledge forms should either give them to designated pledge captains or send them directly to the university’s Budget Division, 229 Business Services Building, Campus Mail 4216. The goal for this year’s fund-raising campaign, which ends Dec. 3, is $435,000.
Broadcast unit donated
A gift from Georgia Public Broadcasting will usher in a new era for the university’s broadcast news program by allowing students to gain real-world experience in covering news.
GPB’s donation of a truck with satellite uplink capability is worth approximately $400,000 and places UGA’s Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication in a select group of college programs with similar equipment.
“If you look at any newscast tonight, a vast majority of the reporting will be done from the field,” said David Hazinski, associate professor and supervisor of Newsource 15, a student-run news show. “This is an advanced reporting technique that we haven’t been able to teach before now.”
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