And in Michigan, university officials are continuing to bolster minority enrollment with affirmative action while preparing to defend the practice in court this fall. All this has come in the wake of political changes that occurred in the mid-1990s. In 1995, the California Board of Regents, the governing body of that state's university system, voted to eliminate racial preferences, a move endorsed by voters the following year. At the same time, a lawsuit filed by white students in Texas forced the UT system to give up affirmative action. Just as California was enrolling its first, post-affirmative action freshman class in the fall of 1998, Washington state voters also abolished the practice.
Suits challenging preferences are underway in Georgia as well as Michigan.
The Center for Individual Rights, the conservative group that has spearheaded most of the suits, argues that diversity has not suffered in states that have ended race-based preferences. Terence Pell, the center's senior counsel, says that minority enrollment remained constant or increased at 68 of the 74 public schools in Texas and California in their second year of colorblind admissions. Although diversity has not declined systemwide, minority enrollment has plunged at the six most selective institutions in those states. Tessa Villaseor, a Berkeley senior admitted in the last pre-Proposition 209 class, believes she might not have gained admission if the current system had been in place. UC officials are struggling to find a formula that will ensure that minority students are not handicapped in the admissions process by the inequities among high schools.