(Name-mce) ListServ Michigan Votes Down Affirmative Action

[Anselmo Villanueva]

November 8, 2006

Michigan Votes Down Affirmative Action

http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/08/michigan

Michigan voters on Tuesday approved a ban on affirmative action at the
state's public colleges and in government contracting. The vote came
despite opposition to the ban from most academic and business leaders
in the state — and the history in which the University of Michigan
played a key role in preserving the right of colleges to consider race
as a factor in admissions.

Defenders of affirmative action had been encouraged in the campaign's
closing days by polls suggesting growing skepticism for the ban. But
in the end, the ban won support from more than 58 percent of voters,
according to unofficial results. Michigan thus followed a pattern in
which some voters appear reluctant to tell pollsters of their
opposition to affirmative action.

A CNN exit poll of Michigan voters suggested that the ban passed
because of support from men. Sixty percent of men, but only 47 percent
of women said that they backed the ban. By educational status, support
for the ban was strongest among those who were college graduates, and
opposition was strongest among those with postgraduate education.
Among white voters, CNN found that 59 percent backed the ban, while
only 14 percent of black voters did so.

The impact of the ban — known as the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
— is expected to be greatest at the University of Michigan, which has
the most competitive admissions in the state. It is unclear how
Michigan will respond to the change, which would take effect in the
middle of an admissions cycle.

Mary Sue Coleman, president of the university issued the following
statement Tuesday night — before final results were in: "We defended
affirmative action all the way to the Supreme Court because diversity
is essential to our mission as educators. We must keep the doors of
opportunity open to all. Regardless of what happens with Proposal 2,
the University of Michigan will remain fully and completely committed
to diversity. I am determined to do whatever it takes to sustain our
excellence by recruiting and retaining a diverse community of
students, faculty and staff."

Coleman plans to meet with students today to discuss the vote.

Donn M. Fresard, editor in chief of The Michigan Daily, which opposed
the ban, said he didn't expect major student unrest over the vote.
"You are not going to see rioting on the Diag," he said. "The average
students isn't overly upset about this, and you'd be surprised how
many students support it. Especially among white students, support was
pretty high."

The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative was the brainchild of Ward
Connerly, who as a regent of the University of California led that
system and then the state to bar affirmative action, with statewide
action coming in 1996 vote. A similar vote two years later banned
affirmative action in Washington State, but efforts by affirmative
action foes then shifted largely to the courts, leading to the
landmark 2003 Supreme Court decisions in two cases involving the
University of Michigan.

Those decisions — one about the system used by Michigan to admit
undergraduates and one about the system used by its law school —
effectively said that colleges could continue to use affirmative
action, but couldn't have separate systems in which extra points were
awarded across the board specifically for race and ethnicity. Many
critics of affirmative action had high hopes that the Michigan cases
would be used by the Supreme Court to roll back its 1978 ruling in the
Bakke case, which upheld the right of colleges to consider race in
admissions. When Bakke largely survived, Connerly and others shifted
back to the referendum approach, with a focus on Michigan.

The effort in Michigan was controversial throughout the process.
Defenders of affirmative action said that those who gathered petitions
on behalf of the measure deceived citizens, leading many to sign the
petitions without realizing what they were supporting. When Michigan
courts said that the petitions were valid, the stage was set for the
campaign that ended on Tuesday.

In that campaign, critics of affirmative action consistently talked
about admissions — in black and white terms — at the University of
Michigan. Defenders of affirmative action stressed the potential
impact of the measure on the education of female students in schools
and colleges, many of which have created special programs for them,
especially in math and science. The emphasis on such programs was seen
in the last week as eroding support for a ban — particularly among
female voters.

- Scott Jaschik