The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 79, No. 25, Ed. 1 Friday, March 27, 1992 Page: 3 of 20
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OPINION
THE RICE THRESHER FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 1992 3
Preferences in Rice admission actually benefit white males
Chandler Davidson
In a previous column, I described
the various procedures by which
undergraduates are admitted to
Rice. Today I shall say more about
those procedures in order to eluci-
date the mechanics of affirmative
action and what is often mistakenly
taken to be its essential component—
the use of quotas.
Are there quotas that shape the
composition of each freshman class?
No doubt about it Rice has estab-
lished formal quotas for music stu-
dents, engineers, architects, scientists,
academs, and athletes. The exact
number in each category varies over
time, according to Richard Stabell,
dean of admission and records.
The first five quotas are imposed
on the grounds that they add to the
diversity of the curriculum and jus-
tify our calling ourselves a university
rather than simply a college or a
specialized school or institute. In the
case of scholarship athletes, it is ar-
gued that they contribute to school
spirit, provide entertainment, make
Rice more visible in Houston and in
the nation, and—so the argument
used to go—generate net revenue.
In describing the justifications for
these quotas, I do not wish to imply
that 1 am persuaded each quota
should exist orthat 1 am not. I merely
want to indicate that an arguable case
can be made for all of them. This is
particularly important, I think, at a
time when the very word quota is
often taken as a synonym for unfair-
ness or irrationality. Universities have
long had quotas of many kinds, and
some, at least, are justified by their
defenders on rational grounds.
To speak precisely, a quota is a set
number of positions allocated in ad-
vance for certain types of students.
By its very nature, it excludes stu-
dents who in some respects are supe-
rior to those who fill the quota By
imposing a science quota, for ex-
ample, the university undoubtedly
prevents the admission of some ap-
plicants who have more potential as
poets or historians.
The six undergraduate quotas so
far mentioned are the only ones Rice
has that 1 am aware of. There is no
racial or ethnic quota, formal or infor-
mal, nor has there been any since
1964, when a 100-percentwhite quota
officially existed. Racial quotas, in-
cluding "affirmative-action" ones de-
signed to compensate for past dis-
crimination, have been held uncon-
stitutional in college admissions since
Regents of the University of California
v, Bakke (1978) was decided by the
Supreme Court
'Hie absence of fixed ethnic quo-
tas is evident when one examines the
numbers of African Americans and
Mexican Americans admitted each
year since 1983. The largest number
of black non-athletes admitted was
29 in 1990. This year—1991-92—the
number is 23. In 1989 it was 16. In
1983 it was 28. There is a similar
variation in the number of Mexican
Americans admitted.
The Supreme Court, while barring
racial quotas in university admissions,
has nonetheless held that it is some-
times permissible for institutions to
take ethnicity into account as one
factor among certain other "back-
ground characteristics" of applicants.
I^ice, like virtually every private uni-
versity in the country, has long given
weight informally to a number of such
background characteristics that have
been justified, whether rightly or
wrongly, as contributing to the over-
all good of the university. Four come
immediately to mind.
One is an applicant's "alum sta-
tus." There are currently two alum-
nae on the admission committee
whose primary purpose there is to
look out after the children or other
relatives of Rice alumni among appli-
cants. When other things are roughly
equal, the alum applicants will be
given preference in the admission
process. This is a common policy in
Amerjcan universities, which surmise
(on the basis of what evidence, I do
not know) that if these applicants are
admitted it will foster alumni identity
with the school and increase their
willingness to give money.
Yet because of Rice's former policy
of racial segregation until 1965, there
were hardly any African American
alum applicants until the late 1980s,
and there have been very few so far in
the 1990s. Thus the alum preference,
from the university's early days to
the present, has disproportionately
benefited white applicants. It also has
benefited Anglos at the expense of
Mexican Americans.
Holding a Naval ROTC scholar-
ship can provide an advantage to ap-
plicants, too. As the ROTC unit needs
a minimum complement to function
effectively on campus, ROTC schol-
arship applicants are sometimes
given preference if the minimum will
not otherwise be reached. This prac-
tice has also disproportionately
advantaged white Anglos, given the
relatively small percentage of minor-
ity ROTC scholarship holders over
the years.
Third, while there is no official
policy on the matter, children of Rice
faculty members who apply are given
preference. This policy, as well as
that of not charging faculty children
tuition, is justified as a faculty fringe
benefit that is said to make Rice com-
petitive with many other universities
which also have this policy. Because
faculty members are overwhelmingly
white, this practice also dispropor-
tionately advantages white applicants.
The fourth background prefer-
ence is for African American and
Mexican American applicants. These
two groups are given special consid-
eration because they have histori-
cally been discriminated against in
the United States and in Texas—and,
so far as blacks are concerned, by
Rice in particular, from 1912 through
1964. The present effects of past dis-
crimination combine to disadvantage
these two groups today and help ex-
plain their low numbers at Rice.
What, then, do these facts allow
us to conclude about the nature of
Rice's affirmative action program?
There are at least two quite different
answers. If an affirmative action polity
is defined solely as the imposition of
a quota, then there is no affirmative
action program at Rice for ethnic
minority applicants, although there
are six such programs based on non-
ethnic quotas. If, on the other hand,
affirmative action is defined as the
practice of giving preferences to ap-
plicants with certain characteristics
that are distinct from the applicants'
prior academic achievement, there
is not one affirmative action program
in Rice's ad mission process but four,
one of which advantages blacks and
Mexican Americans. The remaining
three disadvantage them.
It is interesting to speculate on
how different the Rice student body
todav would have been if the six quo-
tas and four types of preferences had
not been operative. There is no pre-
cise way to estimate their exact im-
pact. But it is reasonable to suppose
that as many as half of the under-
graduates would not be here were it
not for this complexly interwoven set
of factors.
Now let us consider for a moment
only the effects of the four types of
preference based on background
characteristics. Applicants for admis-
sion who benefit from them have an
advantage over applicants of similar
or, in some cases, even better qualifi-
cations. Do students who benefit from
Universities have
long had quotas
of many kinds.
Some are rational.
preferences do as well at Rice as those
who do not? Strictly speaking, it is
impossible to tell by comparing their
achievements at Rice with those of the
rest of the student body, because there
is no way to know with certainty
whether a particular ROTC student,
minority student, or child of an alum-
nus or faculty member was admitted
with the help of a preference. What we
do know is that background charac-
teristics alone are never sufficient to
win admission. Beneficiariesof all four
types of preference mu st gi ve promi se
of being able to succeed at Rice.
On the basis of my conversations
with Richard Stabell and admission
committee chair professor Fred
Rudolph, and of my own experience
on the admission committee, I be-
lieve that the preferences seldom
result either in the admission of un-
qualified students or of those who
are significantly less qualified than
the "typical" Rice student This is
true, 1 contend, regarding Rice's two
targeted ethnic groups just as it is for
beneficiaries ofthe other three types
of preferences.
Some African American and
Mexican American students, of
course, are not beneficiaries of pref-
erences. They would have been ac-
cepted by the best schools in the
country without information about
their ethnicity. In addition, as I noted
in my first column in this series, most
minority students accepted through
the regular admission process (in
other words, those who are not
scholarship athletes) are in the top
five percentof their high school class,
and their application folders indicate
that they have a high probability of
competing effectively at this univer-
sity. Some, from disadvantaged
backgrounds, have overcome great
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obstacles to get to Rice, and are the
first in their families to attend col-
lege. In spite of this, their academic
performance here is, on average,
close to that of the typical Rice stu-
dent, in terms of grade point average
and attrition rate.
Among the Mexican American
and African American students I have
known at Rice, several have gone on
to become successful lawyers, physi-
cians, scientists, engineers, profes-
sors, and architects. One student I
remember well, a black student, ob-
tained the Ph.D. degree in math from
M.IT. shortly after he received his
Rice B.A., and now occupies a high
position in a major international cor-
poration . Another student received a
Ph.D. in political science from the
University of Chicago and has taught
at several major universities, includ-
ing Cornell and Harvard. 1 saw her in
a recent interview on the McNeil-
Lehrer News Hour. Yet another
clerked for a federal appeals court
judge on the East Coast after finish-
ing Columbia Law School. Many have
gone into business, or teach school.
Some have been hired by Rice in
administrative or professorial ca-
pacities. Others, like typical former
Rice students throughout the years,
have become active leaders in their
communities. The students I men-
tion are just ones I knew personally
and have kept up with.
While some of the successful mi-
nority graduates would have been
accepted by Rice whatever their
ethnicity, others probably would not
have been, simply because their SAT
scores were below the usual Rice
range. For example, Alex Byrd, a
recently graduated African Ameri-
can, was one ofthe truly outstanding
students of any color to attend Rice in
recent decades. His tutoring projects
for inner-city high school students,
his many hours spent with RSVP, his
intelligent and spirited letters in the
ITiresher, his work in the Education
Department's summer school pro-
gram, and the national awards he
won that brought special attention to
Rice all attested to his excellence.
His SAT score—which he publicly
revealed in a debate over affirmative
action—was below 1100. (What he
did not reveal, however, was that he
was also valedictorian of his high
school class of over 500 students.)
He is now a graduate student in his-
tory at Duke. We would not have
benefited from his presence and that
of several other outstanding minor-
ity students I have known, were it not
for Rice's affirmative action program.
There is much, then, to vindicate
that program. But there may be costs
incurred by it as well. Therefore, in
my final column next week I would
like to consider some ofthe possible
costs and weigh them against the
obvious benefits of affirmative action.
Chandler Davidson is a professor of
sociology.
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Kim, Leezie & Carson, Chad. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 79, No. 25, Ed. 1 Friday, March 27, 1992, newspaper, March 27, 1992; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245810/m1/3/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.