The Supreme Court’s June 24 ruling on the University of Texas-Austin’s affirmative action policy will likely require no immediate changes to the admissions process at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chancellor David Ward said in a statement.
The case examined UT-Austin’s admissions procedure, which considers race as one factor in the admissions decision. Abigail Fisher, a white student, sued the school after the university rejected her application in 2008. Fisher claimed the university’s admissions policy was a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-1 that public universities should only include race in admissions programs when there are no alternate ways to ensure a diverse campus. The decision also sent the ruling to the lower courts to decide if UT-Austin correctly followed the affirmative action precedent set in an earlier Supreme Court case.
At UW-Madison, admissions staff members use a holistic approach that looks at factors beyond academic performance such as written statements, extracurricular activities and diversity in experience and background, according to the Office of Admissions’ website.
Eric Grodksy, a sociology professor at UW-Madison who has researched affirmative action, said it is unclear how the Supreme Court’s decision will affect the university. Although Grodsky said he is not a legal expert, he believes UW-Madison and other colleges will need to scrutinize their admissions policies and will be unable to use “the diversity rationale of ‘this improves education for everybody.’”
In his statement, Ward said preliminary analysis by UW-Madison’s lawyers shows the verdict seems to be customized to address UT-Austin’s admissions policies, but he said the university will continue to follow the case as it moves into the lower courts.
The court also decided colleges must prove there are no race-blind alternatives to affirmative action, and Grodsky said there are fewer effective methods that can do “stuff around the edges” to avoid this. For instance, colleges can automatically admit students in the top of their classes and rely on racially segregated areas to moderately raise the number of racial and economic minorities. This method is already employed at UT-Austin, where students in the top 10 percent of their class are given entrance without consideration of any other factors.
However, Grodsky said this is not the same as traditional affirmative action.
“If what you really want to do is achieve racial and ethnic diversity, there’s no substitution for actually trying to achieve racial and ethnic diversity, Grodsky said.
