University of Michigan is sued for race discrimination

The University of Michigan is the object of a federal lawsuit asserting that its admissions policies are unconstitutional because they discriminate against whites. The suit is being brought by the Center for Individual Rights, the public interest law firm that won the Hopwood case in Texas. "The racial preference policies at Michigan are more explicit and widespread than they were at Texas," said Terence Pell, senior counsel at the Center.

Confidential admissions policy guidelines, publicized by a University of Michigan professor who had obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act, show a series of grids in which grades and standardized test scores are applied differently to whites and nonwhites.

One of the plaintiffs in the case is Jennifer Gratz, 20, who attended Southgate Anderson High School in Southgate, Mich., and graduated with a grade-point average of 3.765 and an ACT score of 25. According to the admissions grid, those numbers would put a white applicant on the waiting list and admit a black applicant. Ms. Gratz, who was 13th in her class of 298 students, a cheerleader, homecoming queen and a mathematics tutor, was placed on the waiting list when she applied to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1995, and then rejected. She is now a junior and math major at the University of Michigan at Dearborn, where she has made the dean's list several times. She said she is no longer seeking admission, only to get the policy changed.

(Source: The New York Times, October 14, 1997.)

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