New recruitment strategies and the 10 percent law credited with upturn

AUSTIN, Texas
Black and Latino enrollments are beginning to edge upward again at public universities in Texas after the severe drop caused by the 1996 Hopwood decision, which dismantled affirmative action at Texas's public universities.

Officials at the University of Texas (UT), its law school, and Texas A&M University say they feel encouraged by the demographics of the incoming class.

"I think there's every reason to be encouraged by what we see," said Bruce Walker, UT-Austin admissions director.

Walker attributes the slight upturn in minority admissions for fall 1998 to three things: a new state law that requires public universities to accept anyone who is in the top 10 percent of his or her high school graduating class; vigorous recruiting efforts by the university community; and alumni fund-raising campaigns to increase financial aid earmarked for minority students.

Walker's office estimates that the 1998 freshman class will be approximately 3 percent Black. Last year's class was 2 percent African American. Chicanos/Latinos will make up 14 percent of 1998's freshmen as compared to 12 percent in 1997. There will be a total of 6,070 freshmen reporting to the UT-Austin campus in the fall.

About 80 percent of the new law school class has been chosen, said Mike Sharlot, dean of the UT law school. So far, offers of admission have been given to seventeen African Americans, as compared to eleven for all of last year. That number was down from sixty-five in 1996, the last year the law school was able to use its affirmative action program to promote Black and Mexican American enrollment.

So far, forty Mexican Americans have been given law school admission offers. Last year forty offers were extended to Mexican Americans for the entire year. The year before, under affirmative action, seventy Mexican Americans received law school admission offers, said Sharlot.

At Texas A&M, 146 African Americans thus far have confirmed that they will attend Texas A&M in the fall. This compares with 129 at this time last year. Although that is a 13 percent increase, A&M officials warn that they changed the admission schedule and that increase may drop by as much as 5 percent when final figures are completed.

Also, 567 Latinos currently have said they will become A&M freshmen in the fall. Last year at this time, that number was 515. This represents a 10 percent increase.

But the figures also show a much larger group of acceptances overall -- a total of 6,983 compared with 5,332 at this time last year. As a result, the percentages have decreased for incoming Hispanics (down to just over 8 percent from 9.6 percent the previous year) and incoming Blacks (down to 2 percent from 2.4 percent the previous year).

Help from the Legislature

The entering class of 1998 is the second to be chosen under post-Hopwood restrictions on affirmative action.

The Hopwood decision is named after Cheryl Hopwood, one of four Whites who sued the university claiming that they had been unfairly rejected by the law school because of its affirmative action program. Soon afterward, state Attorney General Dan Morales interpreted the ruling to mean that public universities could no longer offer minority Scholarships and other financial aid. The case has been in court for several years and involves a series of rulings.

Recently, a U.S. district court judge awarded Hopwood and her co-plaintiffs $1 apiece in damages, determining that she and the others would not have been admitted to the UT law school even if the affirmative action program hadn't been in place. The judge also ordered the university to pay their attorney's and court fees.

The UT system's regents decided to appeal the Hopwood decision. However, because Morales has refused to appeal on the state's behalf, the regents' appeal is being handled by the Houston law firm of Vinson & Elkins. The firm has worked on UT affirmative action cases for several years Without receiving a fee. a contribution that university staff members said is worth millions of dollars.

Black and Latino state legislators tried to lessen the impact of Hopwood by pushing the 10 percent law through the state legislature. University officials and legislators are optimistic that the law will boost minority enrollment because of widespread de facto segregation in Texas schools. The new freshman class is the first to be chosen with the new state law in place.

"We got some help from the legislature. Rather than wringing their hands and sitting on their hands, they did something," said Walker, adding that it is a bit too early to tell what impact the law will have on increasing the number of minority students at the public universities. "There are still a lot of (high) schools that aren't familiar with the law."

Walker said the university has tried to use students to get the message to minority high school students that they are still wanted on campus. The university obtained a list of 13,000 of the 17,000 high school seniors in the top 10 percent of their classes across the state, and UT students made telephone calls to most of them to let them know about the new law and chat with them about UT.

University staff members and students visited high schools in areas -- such as the Rio Grande Valley, Houston, and Dallas -- where large numbers of African Americans and Latinos live. Groups of high school students from these areas were brought to the campus and invited to spend the night in dormitories to sample the campus atmosphere.

Lane Stephenson, A&M's deputy director of university relations, said that the new 10 percent law has allowed A&M to get students through the application process earlier in the year, which accounts for its larger overall enrollment numbers.

Other Adjustments

There were also workshops for high school counselors in ten major cities to make sure they understand the new state law, Walker said,

In addition, UT is still operating its six outreach centers across the state with Texas A&M University. The centers contact children as early as sixth grade and work with them to encourage the kids to go to college, possibly at UT or A&M.

To blunt the impact of the ban on scholarships and financial aid to minority students, Walker said the UT Ex-Students Association formed a private foundation to award minority scholarships. In one year, the organization raised more than $3 million, including $2 million for undergraduate and law school recruiting donated by prominent lawyer Joe Jamail.

Walker said that the university also awards financial aid to students who have overcome obstacles in their lives to achieve success. Many of these students are children of single-parent or very large families, are the first in their family to attend college, or face other circumstances that might have produced obstacles to doing well in school.

The law school made adjustments to its application procedures as well, said Sharlot. Now applicants are allowed to write essays that describe some adversity they had to overcome in life ... including discrimination. Applicants whose files impress the admissions committee are being invited to Austin for inter-views. By the time the process is completed this year, Sharlot said that about 400 people will have been invited to Austin.

Law school recruiters made visits to major historically Black institutions in Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; and Nashville.

But Sharlot said that the ultimate solution to increasing the numbers of minority law students lies in court.

"To tell the truth, I don't think there is any way we can achieve the level of diversity we had in the past under Hopwood. That's why we're appealing," he said.

Until Hopwood is overturned, UT officials said, Texas's public universities are at a severe disadvantage in recruiting minority students -- a task that is critical in a state that will soon be one of the first in the nation to have no racial majority group.