Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler wants to help colleges strike the tricky balance between creating new affirmative action programs that boost minority enrollment and graduation but also withstand lawsuits.
“Given what has happened with affirmative action across the country, we need to make sure there has not been a chilling effect on colleges,” said Carl Snowden, director of Gansler?s new civil rights division.
“Programs will certainly be challenged, but we want to show we?ve already thought about the questions raised by lawsuits.”
Gansler sent a letter about the effort to the 11 colleges of the University System of Maryland as well as to Morgan State University, St. Mary?s College of Maryland and Baltimore City Community College.
In the letter, he said he intended to review recent legal developments in higher education admissions, financial aid, recruitment and academic support for minority and poor students as well as for those learning English or becoming the first in their family to attend college. Colleges also will receive guidelines for creating programs that help minorities, Gansler said.
USM Chancellor William Kirwan welcomed the initiative, which comes as the system pledges to cut the achievement gap between white and minority students in half by 2015.
“I think there is a lot of confusion in people?s minds about what the law does and does not permit with regard to reaching out to underrepresented groups,” Kirwan said.
Confusion persists, he said, four years after the University of Michigan?s affirmative-action battle reached the Supreme Court.
In the late 1990s, two white women sued the school, sparking a debate on a point system that assigned preference to minority applicants.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that universities can weigh race during admissions because it enriches the diversity of the classroom. But the high court cautioned that it would be unconstitutional to allow race to become the main factor in minority admissions.
More Maryland schools, Kirwan said, could offer summer sessions for minorities and follow President Freeman Hrabowski?s lead at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. There, talented black students earn Meyerhoff Scholarships, which enable them to continue their education and possibly earn doctoral degrees.
“There?s a real wariness on the part of institutions outside Maryland to venture into this area at all,” said JoAnn Goedert, Gansler?s chief of educationalaffairs.
The Supreme Court, she said, has signaled that race-based assistance in admissions can be done, but only “under the narrowest of circumstances.”
