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"Some college administrators seem so distracted with fund raising, academic infighting, and community initiatives that they set up their emergency communications departments very poorly. Training is poor to nonexistent, secretaries are pressed into service with tremendous responsibilities for running 'notification systems' 24/7 and on weekends because no one else knows how to do it and the administration won’t pay for additional staff. Procedures are seat-of-the-pants and dependent on HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion), except when something like Virginia Tech happens and there is some sort of scramble to do something different." --Donna
Most Colleges Avoid Risk Management, Report Says
Jill Biden Shines a Global Spotlight on American Community Colleges
Speaking at a Unesco conference in Paris, the vice president’s wife stressed the importance of two-year institutions to the nation’s educational goals.
Connecticut Public Colleges Lose 200 Professors to Early Retirement
Administrators are scrambling to plug holes in their course schedules for fall, with most expecting to do so by hiring more adjuncts or increasing class sizes.
U. of Georgia Paid 2 Fraternities $2.4-Million to Relocate, Contracts Show
The two were among five with houses on property where the university plans to build new academic facilities.
New Allegations in Admissions Controversy at U. of Illinois Suggest Ex-Provost Played a Role
Linda P.B. Katehi, the incoming chancellor of the University of California at Davis, has insisted she knew nothing of the admission of politically connected applicants at Illinois.
Sonoma State U. Foundation May Lose $350,000 on Loan to Former Board Member
The foundation will be forced to issue fewer scholarships in the 2010-11 academic year because of a diminished endowment, a university official said.
College Suspends Student for Working in Gay Pornography | 58
President Obama's Visit to Notre Dame Carries Barely a Hint of Controversy That Preceded It | 58
Drug Sting Nabs 21 Students at U. of Illinois | 57
Faculty Members and Union Protest Staff Layoffs at Temple U. as 'Cruel' | 57
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April 6, 2007
Sandra Day O'Connor Says Affirmative Action Faces Uncertain Future
Sandra Day O’Connor, the retired associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and author of the majority opinion in a landmark 2003 decision upholding the legality of race-conscious college admissions, acknowledged in a speech today that she is not confident the court had preserved affirmative action in higher education for much longer.
Speaking at Washington’s National Press Club at a symposium on diversity at colleges, Justice O’Connor said, “The future of affirmative action in higher education today is certainly muddy.” As the basis for her observation, she cited Michigan voters’ adoption last fall of an amendment to that state’s Constitution banning affirmative-action preferences, as well as the passage of similar measures in California in 1996 and Washington State in 1998, and current efforts to place preference bans on several states’ ballots in 2008.
Justice O’Connor, who retired last year, said the court’s majority “had tried to be careful in stressing that affirmative action should be a temporary bandage rather than a permanent cure” in the 2003 opinion she wrote in Grutter v. Bollinger, involving the law school at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. In the long term, she said, “It probably would be better if we could remedy the racial gap in academic achievement long before application for college admission,” by finding ways to improve elementary and secondary schools enough that race-conscious admissions policies will no longer be necessary. “I think we are falling down in that area,” she said.
The retired justice observed that public colleges in Michigan are trying to find other ways to maintain racial and ethnic diversity in the absence of preferences — by, for example, considering whether applicants are socioeconomically disadvantaged. But, she said, “we don’t know whether programs like that are going to have an effect or not,” and it could well be that the efforts will also end up being challenged as discriminatory in the courts.
She said it was ironic that private colleges, which are not covered by state bans on preferences, may end up being more diverse in their enrollments than public colleges, which were established to provide broad educational access.
The symposium was held by the Washington and Lee University School of Law to commemorate the centennial of the birth of Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., who first articulated the educational-diversity rationale for race-conscious admissions policies in the court’s other major ruling on college affirmative action, the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke decision of 1978. Justice O’Connor, who upheld Justice Powell’s Bakke opinion as the law of the land in her Grutter decision, choked back tears as she reminisced about how Justice Powell had been a mentor and close friend.
“I continue to miss him very much,” she said. —Peter Schmidt
Posted on Friday April 6, 2007 | Permalink |Comments
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Sandra Day O’Con-job strikes again.
Affirmative Action belongs in the ash bin of history. It’s nothing more than a racial/gender spoils system masquerading as “civil rights” policy.
— Marc Bernstein Apr 6, 11:05 PM #