Anti-white bias exposed, records sought.
Whites and Asians aren’t getting a fair crack at being admitted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
That’s what two studies released late Monday night by the Center for Equal Opportunity indicate. The organization states in a press release accompanying the studies that there is “severe discrimination based on race and ethnicity in undergraduate and law school admissions” at Wisconsin’s flagship institution of higher education.
The CEO — a conservative think tank based out of Sterling, Va.,that pushes “colorblind public policies” and backs the eliminationor curtailment of existing racial preference and affirmative actionprograms — reports that UW-Madison gives “African Americans andLatinos preference over whites and Asians” in admissions. Thestudies, which initially were embargoed until Tuesday morning, werereleased late Monday on the CEOwebsite.
UW-Madison responded with a news release Tuesday morningthat reaffirms the university’s “commitment to the value ofenrolling a highly diverse student body, which creates a vibrantacademic community as well as alumni who are fully engaged in theglobal marketplace.” (This does not explain the ‘value’ of ‘diversity.’ It can’t. –Ed.)
UW-Madison uses what is known as a “holistic” approach todetermine who is admitted to its undergraduate, graduate andprofessional schools. That process, the university states, “takesinto account a range of factors, including grades, standardizedtest scores, recommendations, extracurricular activities,leadership and written statements.” It also takes into accountrace.
The university notes that this “approach is consistent with theU.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in the Michigan affirmative actioncases that say race is a permissible factor in consideration ofholistic admissions.”
According to the executive summary of the CEO report examiningundergraduate admissions at UW-Madison: “In 2007 and 2008, UWadmitted more than 7 out of every 10 black applicants, and morethan 8 out of 10 Hispanics, versus roughly 6 in 10 Asians andwhites.”
But according to Sara Goldrick-Rab, a UW-Madison associateprofessor of education policy studies and sociology, “those numbersdon’t add up.”
She notes that figuresavailable on the UW-Madison website show that “in 2007 and2008, UW admitted about 4 in 10 black applicants, 6.5 in 10Hispanic applicants, and nearly 6 in 10 white applicants.”
Some on the UW-Madison campus were struggling late Monday tomake sense of what the release of the CEO report might mean for theuniversity.
“Are we going to get sued for not having enough white people atour school? How crazy is that?” posed David Vines, who is arepresentative on the Student Services Finance Committee of theAssociated Students of Madison, which is UW-Madison’s studentgovernment. Vines spoke to the Cap Times late Monday night afterlearning of the impending CEO report, but before reading it.
“These organizations have as their mission to systematicallydial back the gains from the Civil Rights era,” Damon Williams,UW-Madison’s vice provost for diversity, told a group of studentleaders Monday night at the Red Gym in a segment recorded by WKOW.com.
Roger Clegg, the president of the Center for Equal Opportunity,was scheduled to hold a press conference late Tuesday morning totalk more about his group’s studies.
Vines says student leaders are preparing a Tuesday rally at 6p.m. on Bascom Hill to protest the CEO’s policies.
A joint statement sent to the Cap Times by UW-Madison studentsSarah Mathews, Noah Whitford, Damon Terrell, Martin Feehan andVines reads: “The Center for Equal Opportunity has launched anattack on the University of Wisconsin-Madison with the goal ofdividing our campus community. As Badgers we stand together insupport of the integrity of our student body and the institutionthat unites us.”
A CEO press release states the studies outlining discriminationat UW-Madison “are based on data supplied by the schoolsthemselves, some of which the university had refused to turn overuntil a lawsuit was filed by CEO and successfully taken all the wayto the state supreme court.”
The CEO studies found that the “odds ratio favoring AfricanAmericans and Hispanics over whites was 576-to-1 and 504-to-1,respectively, using the SAT and class rank while controlling forother factors. Thus, the median composite SAT score for blackadmittees was 150 points lower than for whites and Asians, and theLatino median SAT score was 100 points lower. Using the ACT, theodds ratios climbed to 1,330-to-1 and 1,494-to-1, respectively, forAfrican Americans and Hispanics over whites.”
The CEO adds that for law school admissions, the “racialdiscrimination found was also severe, with the weight given toethnicity much greater than given to, for example, Wisconsinresidency. Thus, an out-of-state black applicant with grades andLSAT scores at the median for that group would have had a 7 out 10chance of admission and an out-of-state Hispanic a 1 out of 3chance — but an in-state Asian with those grades and scores had a1 out of 6 chance and an in-state white only a 1 out of 10chance.”
CEO chairman Linda Chavez said in a news release that “this isthe most severe undergraduate admissions discrimination that CEOhas ever found in the dozens of studies it has published over thelast 15 years.”
Writing in herblog, Goldrick-Rab — who chairs UW-Madison’s committee onundergraduate recruitment, admissions and financial aid — countersthat whether or not preferences are being exercised is beside thepoint.
“At issue is how we help all students succeed,” Goldrick-Rab writes Monday in a post that is critical of theCEO.
In a different postearly Tuesday morning, Goldrick-Rab adds: “Here’s some stuffyou gotta know. In Wisconsin 2.5 percent of blacks are in prison.That rate is 8 times higher than it is for whites. Just 65 percentof blacks earn a high school diploma on time in Wisconsin, comparedto 95 percent of whites. But for some reason, it outrages theCenter for Equal Opportunity that in 2007-2008, blacks made up 2.6percent of the student body admitted to UW-Madison — while 85.5percent of those incoming classes were white.”
Concludes Goldrick-Rab: “Have you EVER walked aroundUW-Madison’s campus and thought, ‘Something must be wrong. There’sjust wayyy too many brown people are here.’ Yeah, that’s what Ithought.”
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