With two weeks left in it’s current term, the Supreme Court is set to hand down three important decisions in the next few days, one of them, Fisher vs. University of Texas, could possibly over-turn affirmative action.
The petitioner, Abigail Fisher, a white Texan, was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin for the Fall 2008 entering class. Fisher sued the university, arguing that the denial violated her Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection because she was denied admission to the public university in favor of minority applicants with lesser credentials.
The decision for this case would overrule Grutter v. Bollinger, the case in which the Supreme Court ruled race could play a limited role in the admissions policies of public universities.
The University of Texas automatically accepts students who are in the top 10% of their class through a law called the “Top 10% Rule,” a Texas law that guarantees in-state students who graduate in the top 10% of their high school class automatic admission to ALL state-funded universities. Students, like Fisher, who do not graduate in the top 10%, must go through an additional selection process to gain admission to the University. This process evaluates their talents, leadership qualities, entrance essay, family circumstances, and race.
In 2008, the year Fisher applied for the University, competition was stiff. Students entering through the university’s Top 10% law claimed 92 percent of the in-state spots. That left 8% of spots to be decided based on the “additional selection process.”
Fisher has said in news reports that she hoped for the day universities selected students “solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it.” But, Fisher failed to graduate in the top 10 percent of her class, so perhaps she didn’t work hard enough. What has also been failed to mention in reports on this case is that 168 black and Latino students with grades as good as or better than Fisher’s were also denied entry into the university that year.
Danielle DeAbreu is a former model and student at William Paterson University studying Broadcast Journalism with a minor in Political Science.
