Texas A&M University president Robert Gates dropped the university’s legacy program Jan. 9, after the program was targeted as being racially discriminative by Texan politicians.
Legacy policy offers four extra points out of 100 possible admission points on a Texas A&M application to children, grandchildren and kin of university alumni. The university, which started using legacies in admission in 1989, was the only public institution in Texas still factoring legacies into admission.
A&M offers admission to 10,000 high school seniors each fall, of which about 6,600 enroll. Out of enrolled students, only 25 percent were affected by legacy policy. The other 75 percent were admitted under the Texas top 10 percent law, which states any student in the top 10 percent of his or her graduating class automatically gains admission with a minimum of 1300 on the SAT.
Legacy policies at Texas A&M affected 358 students last year, and of those, roughly 300 were Anglo, 27 students were Hispanic and six were African American.
Lane Stephenson, deputy director of university relations, said legacy policies do not discern between races.
“As far as percentages, the minority percentages were about the same across the board as all students who benefited,” Stephenson said. “Not numbers, but percentages. We do have a lot more Anglo students, but only because we have a longer history with Anglo students at our university.”
Mike Lavigne, communications director for State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said legacy policies at Texan universities were not specifically targeted by the legislators.
“We weren’t fighting to end the legacy programs as much as we were fighting to raise the minority enrollment,” he said. “A&M said they didn’t want any students to get in on anything but merit, and the legacy program is obviously not merit-based.”
Several press conferences were held prior to the university’s abolition of legacy policies in Houston and San Antonio, with representatives from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Texas Civil Rights project. Although no lawsuits were filed, minority politicians threatened to file lawsuits against Texas A&M if the policy was not altered.
“It doesn’t solve the problem,” Lavigne said. “The problem is that there are not enough minority students at A&M.” According to Lavigne, the student population at Texas A&M is 82 percent Anglo in a state whose total population is less than 50 percent Anglo.
Lavigne said Sen. Ellis’ office would be monitoring minority enrollment numbers despite Gates’ decision to abolish A&M’s legacy.
“It’s a problem [if] you’ve got a 2 percent African American population at your university. I don’t care what school in the country it is, that’s a very low number,” Lavigne said.
