Lawyer Files New Brief on UGA Admissions Policy
ATHENS, Ga.
Lawyers who oppose the University of Georgia’s use of race in its admissions process filed another brief late last month at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Attorney Lee Parks accused the university of “state-sponsored discrimination.”
The brief includes a complaint against the university that says racial bonus points unfairly help non-White applicants “whose median standardized test scores have routinely exceeded the Caucasian applicants.”
Parks says some minorities who do not need help will be unfairly propelled to a higher ranking.
“Based on test scores, some Japanese or Indians, for example, do not need the extra help,” Parks says. “Their scores are already higher than some Caucasians’.”
A federal judge has ruled that using race as a factor in admissions is unconstitutional, but the university is appealing that decision.
In the appellate brief, Parks also says U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield was right in ruling that race-conscious admissions practices are unconstitutional.
The university temporarily dropped its race-sensitive strategy in August, but Parks asked the appellate court to forbid the school from reviving the policy, which he says blocks progress toward “a colorblind system of education opportunity.”
Students in the University of Georgia’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People say the school is sending an unclear, inconsistent message about racism and tolerance on campus.
The school chapter complains that administrators have allowed Alpha Gamma Delta, a sorority accused of discriminating against non-Whites in its membership, to devise its own punishment.
One NAACP student member conceded that the university’s president, Dr. Michael Adams, preaches tolerance. But he says Adams gets his dose of diversity at basketball games rather than at Black cultural events on campus.
Students voiced their concerns at a “Status of Minorities at UGA” rally held last month at the Tate Student Center plaza.
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