The consideration of race in admitting students to the University of Wisconsin does not violate state or constitutional law, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said this summer.
Van Hollen, a Republican, issued the opinion in response to official requests filed by 37 state legislators after the Board of Regents approved a "holistic" admissions policy across all UW System campuses in February. In a letter outlining his decision, Van Hollen said using race is permissible as long as it is done "on the basis of a holistic, individualized evaluation of the application."
The 35-year-old policy was updated in February to be "more narrowly defined" and to "require that admissions officers look at the whole student," UW System spokesperson David Giroux said.
Once updated, various state representatives and senators asked Van Hollen to determine whether the new policy was in violation of a Wisconsin statute. Among those most critical of the policy is state Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, who disagreed with the decision and called the updated policy "reverse discrimination."
"Admissions to the university system should be based on your ability to succeed as a student and your academics," Nass said. "We have a long history of academics being a primary reason for getting into the university system."
Nass said he believes using race to determine admission into any UW System school is unconstitutional.
"What the university is now going to do is to look at the color of a person's skin to determine whether they will get in or not," said Nass, who chairs the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities. "That is simply wrong."
Giroux disagreed and said academics is — and always will be — the primary consideration for admission. Race, he said, is merely an "additional factor."
"The primary consideration in any admissions policy and any admissions decision here in Wisconsin is whether or not that applicant will succeed in college," Giroux said. "The next is whether or not they will add anything to our educational environment."
Giroux added students will be more valuable employees in the future if they come from a campus with a diverse student body, regardless of one's own ethnicity or race.
Nass disagreed, and said "people should not be discriminated against based on the color of their skin."
"When they talk about having this 'melting pot' — or whatever they're talking about — it's just a lot of nice words for reverse discrimination," Nass said. "If you did [this] anywhere else, it would be against the law."UW economics professor emeritus Lee Hansen, whose present research focuses on diversity and preferential minority admissions, said he believes race should not be used as a factor.
"It seems to me that we should not give people preferences, especially when it means admitting some students — minority students especially — who would not be competitively admissible at [UW]," Hansen said. "It seems that we are doing a disservice to minorities by in effect telling them 'Yes, you can make it here,' but in fact they can't."
Hansen added diversity is a "fussy concept" because no one can truly define it.
Overall, Giroux said anyone who clearly reads the policy will determine academics is the primary consideration for admission into UW System schools, and other factors, including race, play a much smaller role.
"Any objective person will conclude that it is a policy that puts academic first — we are a university that puts academics first," Giroux said. "That has not changed; that will not change."
