Opinion ID: 777482
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Is the Law School's Admissions Policy Narrowly Tailored?

Text: 252 If pressed, however, it would be unnecessary to determine whether promoting diversity in education constitutes a compelling state interest because we, just as Justice Powell in Bakke, are not faced with an admissions scheme that is narrowly tailored to achieve the compelling state interest of diversity in education. For the majority, the inquiry into narrow tailoring begins and ends with a determination that the Law School neither sets aside an exact number of seats for racial or ethnic minorities nor admits minorities with a specific quota of admittees in mind. The distinction of quotas from other preferences is the dividing line between constitutional and unconstitutional admissions policies, on this view. For this position, the majority points to the Harvard plan, not of Lowell's time, but the one of which Justice Powell, on the basis of no factual record but only a bland description appended to an amicus brief, spoke approvingly in Bakke. That plan, using race only as a plus, does not offend the Constitution according to the majority because of Powell's advisory opinion on its constitutionality. Therefore, the majority would hold that all plans that merely use race as a plus are constitutional. Yet, the constitutional analysis of racial preferences appears to be binary for the majority in that a preference is either a forbidden quota or a permissible plus. 253 We must be, however, concerned about the magnitude of this preference. Even assuming, against all doubt, that Justice Powell's opinion on the constitutionality of a plan not any part of the case or controversy before the Court could be a holding binding on this court, I cannot believe that a plus of any size, no matter how large, would be therefore constitutional. I believe that the Law School's preference is just too large to be narrowly tailored. 254 My analysis of the narrow tailoring defects of the Law School admissions scheme falls into four parts. First, I detail the true magnitude of the Law School's preference. Second, I explain why we cannot draw a meaningful distinction between the Law School's attempts to achieve a critical mass of under-represented minorities and the quotas that the majority concedes to be unconstitutional. Third, I question whether a strong racial preference bears any demonstrable relationship to the claimed benefits of educational pluralism. Fourth and finally, I suggest some race-neutral means of achieving the Law School's avowed ends that the Law School has not pursued. 255
256 Because the majority has not laid out the magnitude of the discrimination revealed by the record, it is important to detail it here. An examination of the admissions data shows that even the most qualified majority 19 students (those with an LSAT over 170 and a GPA over 3.75) do not achieve the perfect admissions percentages for under-represented minority students with a GPA nearly a point less and an LSAT score in the 164-66 range. More roughly speaking, under-represented minorities with a high C to low B undergraduate average are admitted at the same rate as majority applicants with an A average with roughly the same LSAT scores. 20 Along a different axis, minority applicants with an A average and an LSAT score down to 156 (the 70th percentile nationally) are admitted at roughly the same rate as majority applicants with an A average and an LSAT score over a 167 (the 96th percentile nationally). 257 The figures indicate that race is worth over one full grade point of college average or at least an 11-point and 20-percentile boost on the LSAT. In effect, the Law School admits students by giving very substantial additional weight to virtually every candidate designated as an under-represented minority or, equivalently, by substantially discounting the credentials earned by every student who happens to fall outside the Law School's minority designation. 258 For the potential applicant, the Law School's system creates very different dilemmas depending on his race. If confronted a year before they applied to the Law School with the records of two students, whose non-racial credentials were equivalent, we might evaluate their prospects for admission as follows: Student A could work harder and raise her GPA by a full point. Student B could reveal the fact of his skin color or ethnicity, it being in one of the preferred categories. 21 The Law School's admissions officer, who before both changes would have rated the students equally, would now find the students equal, the effort of the one being counterbalanced by the background of the other. 259 More shocking is the comparison of the chances of admission for applicants with the same academic credentials (at least numerically). Taking a middle-range applicant with an LSAT score 164-66 and a GPA of 3.25-3.49, the chances of admission for a white or Asian applicant are around 22 percent. For an under-represented minority applicant, the chances of admission (100%) would be better called a guarantee of admission. 260 At some point, however, comparison of the admissions rates of white, Asian, and other unselected ethnic applicants and the minority groups designated for preference becomes impossible. The Law School simply stops meaningful consideration of non-minority candidates below certain grade point and LSAT figures, 22 a practice demonstrated by admissions rates well below 10 percent, and often the absence of a single admitted student, in these credential categories. Under-represented minorities, on the other hand, not only continue to have respectable chances of admission in these categories, but in most cases enjoy rates of admission in excess of 80 percent. 23 Far from receiving competitive consideration, majority applicants are all but summarily rejected with credentials, but not ethnicity, identical to their under-represented minority competitors who are virtually guaranteed admission. The Law School's admissions practices betray its claim that it gives meaningful individual consideration to every applicant notwithstanding their race. 261 The sharp threshold for admission that the Law School appears to establish for majority applicants reveals the emptiness of another purported justification for its racial preference. The Law School justifies its stark preference, in part, by claiming that all the applicants admitted, even those admitted because of its preference, are qualified. If the Law School actually believed that all applicants, with combinations of credentials sufficient for admission for minorities, were truly qualified, it would likely be willing at least to consider admitting majority applicants who were equally qualified. Instead, the Law School reveals its true views regarding the necessary credentials for its law students through its clear line in its admission of majority candidates: students below the credential threshold either diminish the educational environment of the school or spare it only if kept to a small percentage of the class. 262 In the alternative, the Law School's process designates as qualified virtually all who apply for admission. If the Law School is being honest, it considers every last under-represented minority admitted qualified. Indeed, the admissions data reveal that the Law School admits nearly every minority student who meets threshold credentials, as there appears to be a sharp cliff in rates of admission between extremely small variations in objective credentials. 24 If the Law School considers everyone above this minority threshold qualified, it must also consider the 89 percent of the applicant pool above this threshold qualified. Yet it is clear that the Law School would not be comfortable with the random admission of any of the 89% of its applicant pool. The Law School does not truly consider majority applicants toward the bottom half of this 89% qualified — it admits almost none of them. 263 The Law School's use of the term qualified reveals its slipperiness. The court majority reveals the Law School's shift in usage when it explains the rejection of a more random selection method because the school seeks to assemble both a highly qualified and richly diverse academic class. Majority Op. at 751. The Law School appears to be all too cognizant of the difference between highly qualified and merely qualified applicants. Its two steep cliffs in the admissions rate, one for under-represented minority applicants and one for majority applicants, demonstrate that the Law School maintains a two-track, indeed separated, system for admissions. Using its under-represented minority threshold, the Law School fills its seats reserved for qualified candidates. Using its majority threshold, the Law School completes the balance of its class with highly qualified applicants. That the Law School merely seeks to insure that all its students are qualified is an empty claim. 264 The Law School argues, however, that these overwhelming data are illusions produced through the smoke of litigation. These data, standing alone, the Law School seems to claim, could be produced by very small differences in actual qualifications. Taking certain hypothetical statistics, the Law School's contention could certainly hold. For example, if for some reason every applicant had the same LSAT score, but every white had a GPA of 3.50 and every black had a GPA of 3.49, a racial preference would be required to obtain any admission of black students, but the degree of that preference would obviously be very small. The difference in chances of admission for the black and white applicants would still be very large, but the practical amount of preference would be very small. 265 However, such are not the admissions statistics in this case. As the statistics show, the degree of preference can be characterized, in the benign words of Justice Powell and Harvard, as a tip only with some considerable violence to terminological exactitude. 25 The term tip would convey to the average reasonable person something that overbalances a fairly closely divided or nearly evenly balanced choice. A seesaw with roughly equivalent children on either end can be tipped from one side to the other with a small weight. However, if a boulder must be placed on one side to shift the balance, the term tip would apply only if it were infinitely elastic. A common-sense view of a tip might be that in a zone where 80 or 90% of majority applicants are admitted, 100% of minorities would be favored. Or, in a zone where only 10 or 20% of majority applicants are admitted, 30 or 40% of minorities might be. If Justice Powell's words are to be used as anything more than a subterfuge, that would be the kind of preference that a fair reading of his opinion might endorse. 266 The majority responds that there is no evidence in Bakke about how large the racial preference was in the Harvard plan of which Justice Powell spoke approvingly. Majority Op. at 756-757. As a result, it is impossible to know whether the Law School's alleged plus was larger than Harvard's. Majority Op. at 749. Immediately thereafter, the majority concludes that the Law School's admission scheme is virtually identical to the Harvard plan, and that therefore the Law School's system must be constitutional. Ibid. How does the majority know that the Law School's system is virtually identical to Harvard's? I am deeply puzzled regarding how the majority could place both its confession of ignorance regarding the details of the Harvard plan and its claim that the two plans are identical in the same paragraph. The majority's argument, yet again, simply elides empirical premises necessary to sustain what it claims to be the controlling analogy between the Law School and Harvard plans. 267 And indeed the majority's recognition that there is no factual record regarding the Harvard plan in Bakke echoes the reason why federal courts do not issue advisory opinions on cases not before them and why we find binding only the holdings, but not the dicta, of prior cases. Without an actual case or controversy before it, a court is not able to develop a factual record and to determine which facts would be legally relevant. The absence of a factual record on the Harvard plan reinforces the reasons that Justice Powell's thoughts regarding its potential constitutionality are not binding. 268 Even if we know nothing of the absolute magnitude of the Harvard plan other than its description as merely a tip or a plus, we have some evidence regarding its relative magnitude. As described in the amicus brief before the Court in Bakke, the Harvard plan provided that the race of an applicant may tip the balance in his favor just as geographic origin or life spent on a farm may tip the balance in other candidates' cases. Landmark Briefs and Arguments, supra n. 1, at 736 (emphasis added). From the description, it would seem that Harvard's racial preference would be similar in magnitude to the preference given other soft factors. We know, however, from the indisputable statistical evidence in this case and the Law School's own admission that no other soft factor is even remotely as significant as race in its admission decisions. Additionally, there is nothing in the Harvard description that even hints that its preferences for race or others factors of diversity are of the magnitude here, taking the chance of admission from near zero to near 100%, in many cases. 269 It is clear from the Law School's statistics that under-represented minority students are nearly automatically admitted in zones where white or Asian students with the same credentials are nearly automatically rejected. Indeed, the Law School concedes that its racial preference is sufficiently heavy that 3 out of 4 under-represented minority students would not be admitted if all students were truly considered without regard to race. JA at 6047. The characterization of the Law School's preference as only a tip or plus would eviscerate those words, and transform Powell's thoughtful discussion into a carte blanche for adopting the UC Davis system with only a few cosmetic changes. 270 One might wonder why I focus so heavily on the LSAT and GPA admissions data provided by the Law School. Of course, the constitutional deficiencies of the Michigan policy have nothing to do with the question of how and whether universities should consider academic measures such as GPA and LSAT in their admissions policies. Michigan is perfectly free to abandon or to restructure those measures. However, those are the standards it has chosen to distinguish among majority candidates, and to distinguish among minority candidates. Equal protection of the laws demands that the objective standards that the Law School chooses are applied with some modicum of equality, and they are not here. 26 271 Michigan argues, with some justification, that it also considers a wide variety of soft factors. And nothing in this opinion denigrates the use of such factors, or even changing or increasing them, so long as they are applied equally. However, it is of the greatest importance to note that Michigan does not contend, in any way, that the consideration of those factors explains any advantage, systematic or otherwise, for minority candidates. It does not make that claim in its filings or briefs, and I specifically put the question in oral argument: Do you assert that under-represented minorities systematically have stronger [soft factors] than non-minority students? Counsel responded with a firm no. Tr. at 41. Thus, the issue is not the merits behind one combination of qualifications or another. The constitutional dilemma presented is the use, or at least the degree of use, of race to overcome qualifications, however defined. 272
273 As I have just explained, the preference accorded minorities in the Law School's admissions scheme is different in magnitude from the plus or the tip that Justice Powell thought might be permissible under certain conditions. The Law School's racial preference, however, suffers from deeper problems — as it appears calibrated to admit a certain percentage of under-represented minority students. The Law School concedes that the preference is designed to admit a critical mass of under-represented minority students. Of course, the term critical mass is intentionally vague. When pressed, the Law School will explain that a critical mass is that number of students necessary to enable minority students [to] contribute to classroom dialogue and not feel isolated. Majority Op. at 746. Pressed further, the Law School will not say that any particular number of minority students constitutes a critical mass. It seems obvious to me, however, that the Law School has an opinion as to what that number is and attempts to achieve it. 27 274 The majority summarily dispenses with this problem, approvingly quoting the comforting reassurances of Dean Lehman (We do not have a portion of the class that is set aside for a critical mass) without noting that in fact a critical mass is always obtained. Majority Op. at 746. And comforting those words must be, as a contrary response would have produced what appears to be the only manner in which a racial preference in admissions could be unconstitutional for the majority: a quota system. Yet Harvard in the 1930's did not have to say that exactly 87 percent of the seats were set aside for Gentiles — it just had to apply an admissions system based on character that achieved roughly the same result. 28 275 The results of the Law School's system to produce a critical mass  reassure us that the Law School really seeks to enroll a critical number of minority students. Between 1995 and 1998, the last four years for which we have data, the Law School consistently enrolled a number of under-represented minorities constituting 13.5 to 13.7 percent of the class enrolled. The absolute numbers are just as consistent: 47 of 341 in 1998, 46 of 339 in 1997, 44 of 319 in 1996, and 46 of 340 in 1995. University of Michigan Law School's Report to the ABA, JA at 643. The statistics demonstrate that the Law School was more successful at enrolling a precise number of under-represented minorities than a precise number of total students. 29 It seems clear to me, at least, that the critical mass the Law School seeks to achieve is only vague and flexible for outsiders not looking at its enrollment statistics. 30 The Law School's critical mass of designated minorities is 44-47 per class, or around 13.5%. 276 The majority and the Law School stress that minority enrollment numbers have varied, indicating that the Law School does not maintain a fixed target for minority admissions. The fact that there has been any variation (.2% over four years), trivial though it may be, in the percentage of students admitted who are minorities satisfies the majority that the Law School does not maintain a quota. After all, the majority instructs us, variation produces a range, and a range will always have a minimum, that might look like a number below which the Law School will not go. Majority Op. at 16. Such is the nature of a range, the majority says, almost suggesting that it was foolish to be concerned about the question. Ibid. 277 I am not concerned just with the bottom of the range, but also its top. The range, as I have demonstrated, is remarkably tight. Admittedly, it is not identical from year to year — but the lack of identity does not seem enough to demonstrate that the Law School does not have an exceedingly precise numerical target in mind when admitting its students. The fact that a quota is a range rather than one specific number certainly does not insulate a program from constitutional scrutiny. In Bakke, had UC Davis said We're going to reserve, oh, about 14 to 18 seats, maybe give or take a few, for minority students — and then, indeed hit that range every year, I doubt that anyone can seriously believe that the outcome of that case would have been different. 278 The majority's reliance on such slight variations also ignores the imprecision involved in producing enrollment. A law school does not admit students with perfect information regarding its yield, that is the percentage of students that will accept offers of admission. The yield is radically dependent on the idiosyncratic preferences of the students admitted. Accordingly, in a given year, highly selective law schools may have ten percent variations in the overall sizes of their enrolled classes, much less any desired component part. The University of Michigan Law School is no exception, enrolling 341 students in 1998, 339 in 1997, 319 in 1996, 340 in 1995, 363 in 1994. Given these uncertainties, the quite narrow range of minority enrollment percentages that the Law School achieves is remarkable for its consistency, and it seems to me that the Law School is doing all it can to achieve a target number of minorities. I take no comfort in the statistically minor variations in minority enrollment. 279 Indeed, the record makes it clear that, to take a hypothetical example, if the Law School were to discover near the end of its process that a large number of its admitted minority students had all decided to attend other schools, thus leaving both a block of empty seats and a huge deficit in the sought-for critical mass, the Law School would bend every effort to fill those seats with minority students. Before all offers of admission are made, substantial numbers of applicants accept, clarifying the likely composition of each class. Law School officials testified that they vigorously monitor the acceptance data with regard to race on a daily basis, see Depo. of Dennis Shields, JA at 2219-20, perhaps to admit minorities that it otherwise would not have or perhaps to admit minorities on the waiting list. This, of course, is the practical equivalent of the segregated waiting lists condemned in other cases. See, e.g., Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932, 938 (5th Cir.1996). 280 The combination of the Law School's thinly veiled references to such a target, its critical mass, and relatively consistent results in achieving a particular enrollment percentage, should convince us that the Law School's admissions scheme is functionally, and even nominally, indistinguishable from a quota system. At the very least, however, the Law School's admission plan seems far from employing the mere plus or tip that the majority characterizes its racial preference to be. 281 In order for the language of plus or tip to have real meaning, there would have to be some indication that the other, allegedly similar, plus factors were also of a strength that were anywhere near the potency of the preference here. After all, Justice Powell himself contended that, to be only his plus, race would need to be just one among many factors. As Justice Powell wrote, 282 The file of a particular black applicant may be examined for his potential contribution to diversity without the factor of race being decisive when compared, for example, with that of an applicant identified as an Italian-American if the latter is thought to exhibit qualities more likely to promote beneficial educational pluralism. Such qualities could include exceptional personal talents, unique work or service experience, leadership potential, maturity, demonstrated compassion, a history of overcoming disadvantage, ability to communicate with the poor, or other qualifications deemed important. 283 Bakke, 438 U.S. at 317, 98 S.Ct. 2733 (Powell, concurring). The majority is content to accept the Law School's claim that it considers some of these soft factors. Majority Op. at 747. I would ask whether any of them are remotely comparable in weight. While not every factor would be required to bear equal weight under the Powell view, it seems clear that at least some of these other factors would need to be capable of taking a student's chances from virtual certainty of rejection to virtual certainty of admission. There is no such evidence as to any race-neutral factor, but there is repeated and consistent evidence of such a treatment of race and ethnicity. 284
285 Even if I were not convinced that the Law School's pursuit of a critical mass of minority students is a constitutionally invalid means to achieve diversity, I would still find the empirical link between such critical mass and the values of diversity lacking. 31 The Law School never provided any evidence that the existence of the critical mass would in fact contribute to classroom dialogue or would lessen feelings of isolation or alienation. The only evidence at all bearing on this is from the Gurin Report. 286 The Gurin report is questionable science, was created expressly for litigation, and its conclusions do not even support the Law School's case. The benefits of a diverse student body that the study purports to prove, essentially better learning 32 and increased democratic participation, 33 are themselves vague to a degree that we would never accept to satisfy strict scrutiny in any other context. The concurring opinion 34 contends that this opinion ignores the Gurin report in discussing diversity's capacity to deliver its claimed benefits. Concurring Op. at 759 (Clay). The concurring opinion, however, does not even mention, much less analyze, the strength of Gurin's proof. The study suffers from profound empirical and methodological defects that lead me to doubt its probative value. And certainly neither the trial court as finder of fact nor the majority opinion take the report's conclusions as fact. 287 First, the report falls well short of making the Law School's case, even if we simply accept it without scrutinizing its conclusions. The report takes no position on how much diversity is required to yield the claimed benefits, and thus does not even purport to substantiate the Law School's claim that a critical mass of minorities is required to achieve the educational benefits of diversity. 35 288 Second, the report's aspirations to empiricism are undermined by the subjectivity of its data. After all, the report bases its claimed educational benefits on only the subjective self-reports of students. 289 Third and most importantly, the statistical regressions relied on by the report never examine the statistical link between having a more diverse student body and the benefits that it claims. Instead, the regressions investigate only the correlation between the claimed benefits and two proxy variables for diversity: classroom diversity and informal interactional diversity. See Gurin Report, JA at 2434, 2437, 2441, 2446. Classroom diversity is defined as the responding student having taken an ethnic studies class, and informal interactional diversity as a student having had social interaction with or about minorities in college. Ibid. Both of these variables, however, are independent of having a more racially or ethnically diverse student body, and appear to make the case for more ethnic studies classes or informational seminars about ethnic issues, instead of greater numbers of minority students. In fact, one wonders why Gurin did not directly correlate her benefits to the much less complex, but infinitely more relevant, variable of participation in a more diverse student body: I fear that Gurin used the proxies because a study of mere student body diversity either did not or would not produce the results that she sought. 36 In any event, we lack any even purportedly empirical evidence demonstrating a correlation between increasing the number of under-represented minorities enrolled and the vague benefits of diversity claimed by the Law School. 37 290 The Gurin Report aside, the link between the Law School's diversity and its claimed benefits is conceptually flawed. The relationship between a critical mass and the values of diversity would depend on contingencies nearly impossible to predict. The Law School's definition seems to depend wholly on the psychological makeup of the people involved, whether labeled as majority or minority. Certainly history is replete with examples of members of minority groups, from Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King to Thomas Sowell, who have said their piece and stood for what they believed in without regard to whether others thought them to be a representative. Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as having said that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. The same is true of representativeness. Apparently, by this measure, if and as members of the under-represented group become psychologically stronger, and thus more able or willing to speak as individuals, the Law School needs less and less of them. 291 On the other hand, if the measurement is based on the attitudes of the non-minority students, there again is little concreteness to the measure. This would seem to mean that if those outside the minority groups were all paragons of tolerance, then there would be no need for any preference, because all students would uphold the precepts of the Constitution and major religions to treat each person as an individual. Conversely, if the majority student body stubbornly persisted (following the Law School's lead) in attributing the experiences and opinions of their classmates to their racial identity, the critical mass would need to expand and expand, presumably until most or all of the recalcitrant majority students had been driven from campus. In short, any sort of rationale-based definition of critical mass seems hopeless. 292 Critical mass also has difficulties if it is defined in a way divorced from some notion of the proper representation of the particular group. Since the Law School gives no principles, sociological or otherwise, by which the non-representativeness of individual group members can be judged, we would have to assume that a critical mass would be of approximately the same size for any designated group. Thus, Afghans, Orthodox Jews, Appalachian Celts, or fundamentalist Christians might also feel that their remarks were being taken as representative, rather than individually, unless they, too, had a critical mass. Then, the makeup of the entering class could be wholly determined by those groups that the Law School chose to classify as appropriate for worrying about their under-represented status. Indeed, the Law School does not appear to believe that the critical mass for Native Americans, for example, is nearly as large as it is for blacks and Hispanics. Thus, some measure of rough proportionality inevitably creeps in as the measure of what is the critical mass. Although the Law School's deponents tried very hard to avoid any specificity in their responses (A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow), it was clear both in the trial record and at oral argument that a number that was only half or less of a group's representation in some national measure of population would not be considered a critical mass. 293 Also problematic is how the Law School has selected the minorities entitled to a preference in terms of fostering a diverse educational environment. The Law School's statement that its actions are justified because members of under-represented minorities are particularly likely to have experiences and perspectives of special importance raises the question of whether it can determine that other groups, such as Americans of Japanese or Welsh ancestry, are particularly unlikely to have such experiences and perspectives. In practical effect, that is what the Law School has decided, and without any specific basis. Either the experiences and perspectives are themselves valuable, in which case they could be judged on that basis without reference to skin color or parentage, or the Law School is assuming a heterogeneity among widely diversified groups.
294 In order for its racial classifications to survive strict scrutiny, the state must first look to race-neutral means to achieve even compelling state interests. The Supreme Court has made clear that courts must determine whether a state's racial classification is necessary with reference to the efficacy of race-neutral alternatives. See, e.g., Croson, 488 U.S. at 507, 109 S.Ct. 706; United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S. 149, 171, 107 S.Ct. 1053, 94 L.Ed.2d 203 (1987); Associated Gen. Contractors of Ohio, Inc. v. Drabik, 214 F.3d 730, 736 (6th Cir.2000). 295 What is not crystal clear, however, is the nature of the consideration that reviewing courts must undertake. Yet only one tack makes analytical sense. In order to prevail under strict scrutiny, the state must demonstrate not only that its racial classification achieves compelling state benefits, but also that these benefits may only be obtained by the shift from a well-designed, race-neutral alternative. Put differently, the state must demonstrate that the marginal benefits gained from employing the racial classification over the next most efficacious race-neutral alternative are themselves compelling. Any other standard would make success under strict scrutiny a mere exercise in question framing. The interest vindicated by a racial classification would look very large, perhaps even compelling, when compared to the benefits delivered by some dismal alternative. Instead, we should require that before we find marginal benefits reflective of a compelling state interest, they must be those gained over the best race-neutral alternatives. 296 Consider some of the race-neutral alternatives available in this case. The gradient of benefits, along which the race-conscious and race-neutral means are judged, is academic diversity, or achieving a pluralism of experiences and ideas. See Part III.A.1. Earlier in this opinion, I discussed the possibility of considering experiential diversity in a race-neutral manner. Swamped with the children of wealthy suburbanites, the Law School could seek out applicants who were raised amidst relative poverty, who attended under-funded or failing schools, who walked to school past warehouses instead of coffeehouses, who experienced but conquered extreme emotional trauma, like the loss of a parent, who prevailed over a profound childhood illness, who have dedicated years to helping the poor in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, or, even less stirringly, who have a strong accounting background among a raft of history majors. If it really is a diversity of experiences and viewpoints that the Law School seeks, why cannot the Law School just seek those experiences and viewpoints? 297 Instead, the Law School searches for particular races and ethnicities as a means of securing a diversity of experience, and, so they say, for no other purpose. A well-functioning search for experiential diversity would certainly yield the greatest measure of it. After all, even the Law School would admit that race is an imperfect proxy for experiential diversity. Next-door neighbors in Grosse Pointe, separated only by 30 yards and the color of their skin, would not necessarily be significantly different from each other. In principle at least, the race-neutral means of seeking the experiences themselves would seem superior to the Law School's race-conscious means, if its aim is as it professes. This is quite the opposite of the woeful inadequacy of race-neutral means that we generally require to consider a racial classification narrowly tailored. 298 In practice, the Law School could make all sorts of arguments about the inadequacy of merely seeking experience. For example, admissions officers would have to read (and seriously consider) more text in an application if it were seeking experience rather than race. The medium for communicating this quality, of course, lacks the efficient simplicity of the racial check-box. Yet, over and over again, the Law School has reassured us that its exquisitely meticulous admissions officers already consider each application individually and thoroughly. Such is the luxury, the Law School tells us, of so few applications and spots to fill. I am willing to take the Law School at its word, and believe that it is fully capable of undertaking this searching review of individual experience. 299 Also, a system seeking experiential diversity might increase the risk of applicant fraud. It might be somewhat easier to verify that some individuals were truly of the right group than the details of their life stories. This comparative ease should not be overstated, however, as the distinctions between the Law School's under-represented minorities, from various types of Hispanics to the marginally African-American, and the rest of society can be very subtle indeed. See Part III.B.2. Moreover, there are all sorts of readily identifiable indicia of experiential diversity. One's home mailing address gives quite a bit away. Law schools already ask for detailed financial information to make financial aid judgments, permitting a review of the relative poverty to which the applicant was subjected. If the Law School were interested in the student's secondary education, and the experiences that it imparted, it would not be outrageous to ask for a high school transcript. Indeed, as a good portion of the Law School's student body hails from Michigan, see JA at 1947, the Law School's seasoned admissions officers could probably develop a pretty intimate understanding of the state's high schools. 300 In short, the ready availability of seeking unique experiences themselves, rather than an imperfect proxy for them, demonstrates that the marginal benefits of the Law School using its suspect racial preference instead of the available race-neutral means are far from compelling. In fact, because it seems to me that selecting on the basis of race is actually a more poorly calibrated means of achieving the experiential diversity that it allegedly seeks, I doubt that the Law School is really interested in academic diversity. And this academic diversity is the only diversity that will satisfy the Powell opinion that the majority considers outcome-determinative. Instead, it is more likely that the Law School's preference for certain races is an interest in race itself. 301 Another race-neutral alternative mentioned is conducting a lottery for all students above certain threshold figures for their GPA and LSAT. This would insure a student body as diverse as the qualified applicant pool itself. As demonstrated above, the Law School's unwillingness to conduct a lottery among all those students that it considers qualified reveals that it really maintains a two-track admissions system, one for the highly-qualified students of all races that it generally seeks, and another for under-represented minorities who are only qualified. 38 302 The availability of such race-neutral means, especially in dealing with the manageably small applicant pool of the Law School, reveals that the Law School's talk of desiring only academic diversity is only window dressing for sheer racial discrimination.