The case of Abigail Fisher vs. the University of Texas is quickly approaching a hearing before the Supreme Court and stirring up a significant amount of controversy along the way. Fisher, a Caucasian student, claims she was denied admission at the university on account of her race. When her case came before the Federal District Court in Austin, Judge Sam Sparks ruled that the university was allowed to take race into account when admitting students to college. If Fisher’s case is heard by the Supreme Court, legal experts say that the Court will likely rule in her favor, thereby decreasing and possibly even eliminating the consideration of race in the college admissions process.
Fisher comes off as an embittered college student, and understandably so. With the stakes of college admission growing significantly higher as the years go by, it may seem unfair to take race into consideration. However, the attribute of a diverse student body has inherent benefit to an institution and its environment, and if race were not taken into account, some of that diversity would be inevitably and irrevocably lost.
Moreover, even though racial oppression is no longer a prevalent issue in the U.S., we cannot simply ignore more than two centuries of mistreatment and disenfranchisement of African Americans, Native Americans and other minority groups. Although it no longer exists on such a large scale, those poisonous roots still remain and permeate the structure of our society, and as such should be a factor when admitting students to college. If an African American student from a low-income area has an application of the same caliber as a white student from middle-class suburbia, then clearly there is something to be said for the achievements of the African American. This sort of thing should not be left unexamined by college admissions counselors.
In addition, Abigail Fisher absolutely has no way of proving that she was not admitted to the university solely because of her race. Perhaps if her grades had been a little better, her SAT scores a little higher or her involvement in activities a little greater, her application would have been more compelling and she would have been accepted. Race alone is never the sole basis for admission or denial. Suing an institution of higher learning for that reason is not unlike suing them because they denied an applicant admission because they were not a first-generation college student. The mere thought is ridiculous.
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