Whether you agree or disagree this issue will be highly discussed in medical
school interviews! Don't think about it from your head; think about it from
the standpoint of how it will affect you and your ability to treat patients
who may be very different from yourself. Will a diverse medical school
class be better training for you or would you prefer a class that looks
mostly like you? No right or wrong answer, but you should know what you
are most comfortable with and then think about this case and how it may
affect your training.
_____
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October 31, 2006
Race Preferences Vote Splits Michigan
By TAMAR
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/tamar_lewin/in
dex.html?inline=nyt-per> LEWIN
ANN ARBOR, Mich., Oct. 25 - Three years after the Supreme Court heard
Jennifer Gratz's challenge to the University
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/univers
ity_of_michigan/index.html?inline=nyt-org> of Michigan's affirmative action
policy, she is still fighting racial preferences, this time in a Michigan
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessio
ns/michigan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> ballot initiative.
"We have a horrible history when it comes to race in this country," said Ms.
Gratz, 29, a white applicant who was wait-listed 11 years ago at the state's
flagship campus here. "But that doesn't make it right to give preference to
the son of a black doctor at the expense of a poor student whose parents
didn't go to college."
The ballot initiative, Proposition 2, which would amend Michigan's
Constitution to bar public institutions from considering race or sex in
public education, employment or contracting, has drawn wide opposition from
the state's civic establishment, including business and labor, the
Democratic governor and her Republican challenger. But polls show voters are
split, with significant numbers undecided or refusing to say where they
stand.
Passage would probably reinvigorate challenges to a variety of affirmative
action programs in other states. In California, where a similar proposition
passed in 1996, the number of black students at the elite public
universities has dropped. This fall, 96 of 4,800 freshmen at the University
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/univers
ity_of_california/index.html?inline=nyt-org> of California, Los Angeles - 2
percent - are black, a 30-year low.
For the University of Michigan, the proposition would require broader
changes than the Supreme Court did; it ruled in Ms. Gratz's case and a
companion case that while the consideration of race as part of the law
school's admissions policy was constitutional, a formula giving extra points
to minority undergraduate applicants was not.
The president of the university, Mary Sue Coleman, an opponent of the
proposition, said its reach could extend into K to 12 education.
"It would make it illegal to have our program targeting girls in junior high
school, and having them come to campus to learn about science and
engineering," Ms. Coleman said. "I'm a woman scientist, and I know how
fragile our gains are."
Such arguments have resonance in Ann Arbor, where the Democratic
headquarters is doing a brisk business in "No on 2" yard signs.
"We need to keep affirmative action because it's still not a level playing
field for women or minorities," said Gena Morris, who is black, an event
planner who volunteers at Democratic headquarters.
Susan Greenberg, a widow whose husband was a University of Michigan
professor, took home a yard sign recently, saying, "It's probably the most
important thing on the ballot."
Just 20 miles north of the liberal university enclave, in Brighton, there is
less familiarity with the proposition but more opposition to affirmative
action.
"I don't know a lot about Proposition 2, but I do know a neighbor kid, a
good kid, a local kid with a 3.7-3.8 average, who didn't get into the
university and he should have," said Vicki Smith, who is white, shopping one
afternoon at Kohls department store. "I do think there's something wrong
with their admissions."
Pollsters, in fact, say the Nov. 7 results may well turn on whether the
measure is seen primarily as a race issue.
"If voters think about it as being about race, black and white, support goes
up," said Ed Sarpolus, vice president of EPIC-MRA, a polling firm in
Lansing. "So the opponents are trying to show that it's not just race, that
it would hurt women, hurt Michigan's economy, and they're having some
success with that."
Though most of the debate on the proposition has been about race and college
admissions - four out of five Michigan residents are white - the ballot
initiative is also playing out against the state's somber economic picture
of high unemployment, high migration of young people and a wrenching
transition away from manufacturing.
Opposition to Proposition 2 is strongest in majority-black Detroit and a few
liberal strongholds like Ann Arbor. Like California's Proposition 209, which
passed in 1996, Proposition 2 has been backed by Ward
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/ward_connerly/
index.html?inline=nyt-per> Connerly, a wealthy black Republican who is a
former University of California regent. If Mr. Connerly is successful in
Michigan, and maybe even if he is not, he is likely to carry the fight to
other states.
"When my toes turn up, that's when I'll stop fighting this," said Mr.
Connerly, who has provided nearly $500,000 for the Michigan Civil Rights
Initiative, the group Ms. Gratz leads. "As John
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/john_fitzgeral
d_kennedy/index.html?inline=nyt-per> F. Kennedy said," he continued, "race
has no place in public life."
As of Oct. 20, the group had raised $1.4 million and spent $782,000.
Ms. Gratz, who grew up in a working-class suburb of Detroit, graduated among
the top 15 in a high school class of about 300. But she only made the wait
list for the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan and never
returned the postcard that would have kept her on the list for available
spaces.
She graduated from the University of Michigan-Dearborn with a math degree
and became a product manager at a technology company. She also pursued the
suit against the university. She called Mr. Connerly soon after the Supreme
Court ruled on her case, and they began working on the Michigan proposition.
It has been her full-time job for three years.
Opposition to the measure is led by One United Michigan, an unusually broad
coalition that includes Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat, and her
Republican challenger, Dick DeVos, as well as unions, churches, businesses
and higher education and civil rights groups. It has raised and spent $3.3
million.
"We have the A.C.L.U. sitting with the Michigan Catholic Conference on the
steering committee, which is something you don't see very often, " said
David Waymire, a coalition spokesman. "There isn't a big Michigan voice on
the other side. But it's tough. Two years ago, the initial polling found
more than two-thirds supported the proposition. The miracle is that we've
gotten it into a winnable range."
Coalition members said Proposition 2 would hamper employers' efforts to
diversify their work forces. They said it would also force some local
governments to eliminate outreach and set-aside programs for minority
contractors and would diminish the already-meager representation of black
and Hispanic students at the flagship university here.
"It would be like slamming a door on progress," Ms. Coleman said. "I will do
everything that's legal to help us attract minority students. But it's
already having a chilling effect."
This year, the freshman class at the Ann Arbor campus has 330 blacks, or 6.4
percent, down from the high of 499 in 2001, and from 350 in the year after
the Supreme Court case, when a new admissions process was adopted. Over all,
blacks make up 7.2 percent of the undergraduates. But there are other ways
to look at the numbers.
The Center for Equal Opportunity in Virginia, which supports the
proposition, released an analysis of University of Michigan data finding
that black applicants who were accepted by the university had lower grades
and SAT scores than white applicants who were admitted. The median SAT for
black students who were admitted was 1160 in 2005, it said, compared with
1350 for whites.
The center said the university now weighed race and ethnicity even more
heavily than before the Supreme Court ruling.
The university disagrees. "Their analysis is flat-out wrong and carefully
calculated to achieve a political outcome," said Julie Peterson, a
university spokeswoman.
She said that the center overlooked factors added to the admissions process
after the ruling, like recommendations, essays and extracurricular
activities, and that the data on which the center based its conclusions did
not include all applicants.
Ms. Peterson and others at the university emphasized that because there were
so many white applicants and so few blacks, an end to affirmative action
would not substantially increase white students' odds of admission. In their
book, "The Shape of the River," Derek C. Bok and William G. Bowen estimated
that if selective universities had race-blind admissions, the probability of
white students' admission would rise only slightly - to 26.5 percent from 25
percent - while black students' admissions would decline by half.
Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil
Rights said the proposition would help determine the future of affirmative
action.
"Michigan is ground zero in the national debate on the meaning of equal
opportunity," Mr. Henderson said. "It's really important that we stop this,
before Ward Connerly takes the battle to other states."
But in many quarters here, public support remained strong, which Ms. Gratz
said indicated just how much Michigan's power brokers were out of touch with
voters.
"The entire elite establishment is all lined up on the other side of this
issue," Ms. Gratz said, "but the mainstream, normal, everyday people who go
to work every day think their husbands, their wives, their kids, should be
treated equally by our government, and should not be judged on race or sex."
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