Arizona Public Law Schools Discriminating Based on Race
Yesterday the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) released two reports that show law schools at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University, both supported by taxpayers, discriminate against white and Asian applicants in favor of blacks and Hispanics. The studies describe the discrimination as “severe.”
Black and Hispanic students are admitted with “significantly lower undergraduate” GPAs and LSAT scores. CEO chair Linda Chavez said the odds favor black students over white students at the University of Arizona 250 to 1 and 1115 to 1 at Arizona State.
“[N]early a thousand white students during the years we studied were denied admission even though they had higher undergraduate GPAs and LSATs than the average African American student who was admitted–and over a hundred Asian and Latino students were in the same boat with them,” she said.
Roger Clegg, CEO president, added that race weighed more heavily in admission decisions that residency status. “For instance, a white Arizonan in 2007 was about eight times less likely to be admitted to the University of Arizona than a black out-of-state applicant, and at Arizona State he would be twelve times less likely to be admitted.”
Undergraduate and medical school admissions at the University of Arizona also showed evidence of discrimination, though to a lesser degree. Download reports for both schools in Word documents: University of Arizona and Arizona State.
The American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) is trying to put an end to such discrimination in taxpayer-supported schools. ACRI’s effort to add the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative (AzCRI) to the state ballot failed after the campaign ran out of time to validate some 6,000 signatures. The proposed amendment would have barred the state government from granting preferential treatment to any person on group based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in government hiring, contracting, and admissions.
AzCRI director Max McPhail said a new campaign will begin after November to place the initiative on the November 2010 ballot. In the meantime, we’ll continue exposing discrimination perpetrated in the name of “diversity.”
