Sebastien Angel | Judging need goes beyond a student's race

Spend some time digging among the stories of the Democrats' successes on Nov. 7, and you'll find some gains for traditionally Republican issues, too. Look to the Midwest, and you'll see a resounding victory on a divisive ballot initiative in a state that hasn't rejected a Democratic presidential nominee since 1988.

Michigan, always a hotbed for affirmative-action discussion, supported a ban on "affirmative-action programs that give preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin."

Defenders of affirmation action are already knocking down the doors of the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union, suggesting that a ban on the minority boost represents a condemnation of underrepresented groups in the state's public colleges. You can bet that legal action of some sort will probably be forthcoming.

In light of all this, Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the University of Michigan, pledged in a speech to "begin exploring legal action concerning this initiative." Standing on the "Diag," which is sort of like College Green and Perelman Quadrangle rolled into one, Coleman addressed students with fighting words.

"I have directed our general counsel to consider every legal option available to us," Coleman said, dismissing the irony of using public money to help override the will of the public. "I am standing here today to tell you that I will not allow this university to go down the path of mediocrity."

But despite what opponents say, the message was loud and clear, and it had nothing to do with bigotry, mediocrity or a rejection of diversity in higher education. Fifty-eight percent of Michiganders simply challenged the state's public universities to stop being lazy.

In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions system was unconstitutional. Previously, undergraduates from underrepresented minority groups automatically received 20 of the 100 points needed for admission.

Nonetheless, a caricature of that system persists at Michigan and at universities across the country. Even if admissions officers can't give minorities a boost on paper, they can certainly do so in their own heads. When it comes time to choose who gets in and who doesn't, admissions departments can easily give underrepresented students the equivalent of a 20-point boost, a 40-point boost or no boost at all. There is just as much mystery surrounding minority admissions today as there was five years ago.

Michigan's voters just want an end to all that, and so do voters in California and Washington, the other two states (both liberal) that have enacted such bans; they want real diversity in their public schools.

Not just visual diversity, as in lots of different people who have lots of different skin colors. They want diversity of opinions, ideas and experiences. Maybe a rich black student who's been educated in his state's best schools will have a different point of view than a rich white one who went to the same schools. But I think there's a lot more to be gained from someone who comes from one of the roughest neighborhoods in Detroit and attended its worst schools.

The key is to look at affirmative action in public higher education as more than just a reward for past accolades. That's the easy way out. It should also be a way to find people with few opportunities but a great potential to succeed, and it should give them opportunities to tap that potential.

High-scoring, accomplished minorities who have had all the opportunities in the world deserve to get where their talents take them. They just don't deserve to get a boost on the way there, like they get under Michigan's point system and its current incarnation. When they do, the people in the second category - the people affirmative action is theoretically designed to help - get snubbed.

I believe that most of the people in California, Michigan and Washington are just hoping for talented, capable members of that second group to get their fair shake after being held back by their environment during the first 18 years of their lives.

That, after all, is what the whole process is supposed to be about.

Sebastien Angel is a College sophomore from Worcester, Mass. His e-mail address is angel@dailypennsylvanian.com. Overnight Celebrity appears on Wednesdays.

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