No place for race

by Badger Herald Editorial Board

Thursday, January 18, 2007 00:00

After tabling the debate in December, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents is set to again consider a change to its freshman admissions policy at the board’s February meetings.

UW-Madison already uses a “holistic” admissions approach, which considers race, socioeconomic status and community involvement, in addition to GPA, class rank and standardized test scores. This approach would be applied to other UW System schools if the board adopts the new policy.

Several weeks ago, former University of California regent and anti-affirmative action activist Ward Connerly spoke before a special legislative committee formed to investigate affirmative action. Although Mr. Connerly’s visit to Madison was met with much hostility, we appreciate his interest in the UW System and share his view that it is wrong for public universities to use race as a factor in admissions.

While intellectual diversity is certainly a worthwhile goal in an academic environment, using race as a proxy is simply flawed. It is little more than a weak attempt at correcting the deeply rooted racial and educational problems in our state.

And, while we acknowledge that reasonable arguments can be made on both sides of this debate, it was nevertheless unsettling to hear Chancellor John Wiley’s remarks last week to the legislative committee. Wiley claimed that a student has never been denied admission to make room for a less qualified applicant of any race, according to a report by The Associated Press.

The remarks — which are disingenuous at best — seem to be an attempt by the university to have its cake and eat it too. It is exceedingly difficult to believe that, with a finite number of slots available and with race as an explicit consideration, a student has never been denied because of the university’s affirmative action policy.

We would much prefer to see substantive change take place at the elementary through high school levels instead of using race-based admissions policies in college and calling it a panacea. For example, it would be wise to reconsider the current system whereby local property taxes are used to finance local public schools — a system that has left poorly performing Milwaukee public schools, in particular, in a catch-22.

We do applaud the university’s efforts to recruit qualified minority candidates from areas like inner-city Milwaukee and American Indian reservations. However, until race is removed as a factor in the admissions process, these efforts will appear to be little more than recruiting with a wink and a nudge.

With a national holiday commemorating the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebrated just days ago, it may be tempting to assume we’ve done away with the racial problems of our not-so-distant past. While this would certainly be a mistake, it is nevertheless crucial that the regents adopt a forward-looking admissions policy that can achieve the intellectual diversity we all desire without resorting to racial preferences.