Posted on: Thursday, January 23, 2003
EDITORIAL
Affirmative action fight could hurt here
Not surprisingly, President Bush's challenge to the University of Michigan's affirmative action program is being closely monitored by thousands of American colleges, including, of course, our own University of Hawai'i.
UH says race doesn't factor into its admissions. The system is one of the most diverse in the nation. However, it does grant tuition waivers to Native Hawaiian students. And if the U.S. Supreme Court finds the University of Michigan's policy unconstitutional, UH is going to have to get pretty creative about how to hold on to those tuition waivers.
"We're certainly reviewing those (tuition waiver) programs to see how we can tailor them so they can be continued (in the event of an adverse ruling)," said Alan Yang, UH-Manoa's dean of students.
In the Michigan case, three white students seeking admission sued, claiming they were rejected despite holding qualifications equal to those of minorities who made the cut.
In response, Bush says a better system of providing diversity in higher education is to follow the policies of such states as California, Texas and Florida. For example, Texas' so-called race-neutral alternative guarantees a university place to public students statewide who graduate in the top 10 percent of their class.
This is a potentially valid way around challenges to the implementation of racial quotas. But it has its disadvantages, including the potential to motivate students at high-performing schools to transfer to a lower-performing school so they can graduate in the top 10 percent and be guaranteed a place at a university.
Despite UH's diversity, it also has its underrepresented student groups, which include Hawaiians, Filipinos and Samoans.
And it has repeatedly affirmed a commitment to bring more Native Hawaiians into higher education, for past injustices, among other reasons.
As Yang puts it, "having a diverse and representational student body is not just the ethical but also the educational thing to do."
