Anti-Affirmative Action Group Says Medical College Discriminates Against Whites

OKLAHOMA CITY
A study released recently by an anti-affirmative action group says the University of Oklahoma discriminates against Whites in medical college admissions, but an OU official denies it.
The study by the Center for Equal Opportunity concluded that OU and four other colleges based some of their admissions on race, having studied admissions data from 1996 and 1999. According to the study, a non-Asian minority applicant — with all other things being equal — was four-and-a-half times more likely to be admitted over a White applicant in 1996 and five times more likely in 1999.
OU spokeswoman Catherine Bishop said the school considers factors in addition to grades and test scores, but that it has no racial or ethnic preferences or quotas.
The Center for Equal Opportunity is headed by Linda Chavez, former director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
The study showed many students were admitted to medical schools who could not perform and subsequently wasted tax money, Chavez said.
Chavez said using race to determine medical school admission violates the equal protection provisions of the U.S. Constitution. The study was compiled from admissions data from the OU Medical College of Medicine, the Medical College of Georgia, Michigan State College of Human Medicine, State University of New York (SUNY) Brooklyn College of Medicine and University of Washington School of Medicine.
The study concluded that all gave some preferences to minorities.
The study says that in 1999 at OU, the medical college rejected 18 Asian, 18 non-Asian minority and 118 White resident applicants.
Of those, 14 Asians and 70 Whites were rejected despite higher college grades compared with the median grade point average of the non-Asian minority students. Two Asians and 46 Whites were rejected despite having higher MCAT scores than the minority students; and two Asian and 29 Whites were rejected despite having higher grades and test scores.
Bishop said OU officials had not had the opportunity to read the report, but that the medical college is committed to educating well-qualified physicians.
Last year, the Center for Equal Opportunity targeted the admissions practices at public colleges and universities in Maryland, releasing a study indicating that Black students were being admitted with lower SAT scores than those of White students (see Black Issues, Oct. 26, 2000).