Appeals Court: Texas Can Use Race in Admissions

[FunkMonk]

 

[The Minsky Moment]

What are the other measurements for diversity?

I may have phrased the question wrong.
The task of the university was to come up with a narrowly tailored way to serve the diversity goal.  They way they did that to admit the vast majority of the class (well over 80%) on purely objective race-neutral criteria (principally high school class rank).  A small percentage of the class was determined accorded to the "holistic criteria".  All that means is that admissions officers considered a wide variety of factors, including test scores, grades, essay performance, extra-curriculars, work experience, family responsibilities, "leadership qualities", community service, "socioeconomic status.". Race is one of the many criteria that may be considered.  There is no explicit weights for the different elements of the "holistic review" except that applicants with higher test scores and grades are placed in boxes on a matrix that gives them priority.

Fisher's argument was that this process wasn't narrowly tailored because the percentages of African-Americans and Hispanics were sufficiently high to make further use of race as a criterion unnecessary.  But this is effectively the same as saying what UT should have done would be to include a specific numerical target or quota into its decision process.  That is, she was arguing that a program should be considered not narrowly tailored (and hence constitutional) if it *lacks* a numerical quota component.  That seems wrong to me.