THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507230031
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
American colleges and universities must pursue a diverse mix of students, whether they use affirmative action to draw them or not, Virginia educators say.
That will be just as true, they said on Friday, in California, where on Thursday the state university system dumped affirmative action from all of its admissions and hiring programs. California will simply have to use different methods now to work toward similar goals, they said.
``If you want diversity, you have to seek it,'' said Martha Rogers, vice president for enrollment management at Virginia Wesleyan College.
``It's in all our very best interests to see that as many people as possible go to college,'' said David R. Bousquet, admissions director at Virginia Tech. ``College graduates tend to make more money over the course of a lifetime. They pay more in taxes.
``To be a diverse community, you need a critical mass of people.''
Virginia colleges and universities use many methods to attract minority students, and not all are truly affirmative action. That specifically refers to programs that give enrollment preference to minorities, sometimes even if their scores are not as good as non-minority applicants.
For the educators interviewed Friday, there is no question about whether they want minority students. The only questions are how many and how to pick them.
Robert Belle, associate director for student affairs with the State Council on Higher Education, said, ``I would not want us to rush to judgment in terms of relating what happened in California to what goes on here.''
Virginia schools have been reviewing their affirmative action policies, he said, even before the controversy in California. That process is expected to continue.
Earlier this year, Gov. George F. Allen sought to curtail affirmative action programs at state-supported colleges and universities.
But the Democrat-controlled House of Delegates rejected Allen's plan, a move that allowed state institutions to maintain existing preferential programs for admissions, faculty appointments and employment.
Mark Christie, Allen's deputy counselor, said the governor's proposal differed from the action taken in California because it would not have eliminated preferential treatment altogether.
``It was not to wipe out affirmative action with a clean slate,'' Christie said. ``It was to make sure it was narrowly tailored.''
The idea, Christie said, was to allow colleges and universities to develop outreach programs aimed at increasing the diversity of the pool of applicants.
``As far as questions on reverse discrimination, I'm not for that,'' Allen said Friday.
Belle and others said one challenge for universities will not go away, no matter what happens to affirmative action:
How do you balance race against such other factors as test scores, interviews and family connections?
``If I understand some of the other Supreme Court decisions on this, while race could not be used as an exclusive factor, it could be used as a factor. One factor,'' Belle said.
While large schools such as the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech use affirmative action policies, among others, to sort out applicants, a small school like Virginia Wesleyan may not.
``We recruit aggressively in a variety of ways,'' Rogers said. ``For example, there's a school in Atlanta that we visit which is traditionally and predominantly African-American. We make sure we are there every year.''
Last week, she said, Wesleyan was host to 15 minority students from local middle schools to get them acquainted with the campus.
Wesleyan has a 12 percent minority student population, Rogers said, ``But we're not where we want to be yet. We sent a recruiter to Puerto Rico this year.''
Universities compete heavily, Bousquet said: ``Everyone is looking for the most talented students. The very best students have lots and lots of options.
``For some institutions their location will allow them to attract a diverse population,'' he said. ``For others their reputation will do that. And for others it's very difficult to do without affirmative action measures.''
Belle argues that giving minorities a fair chance to go to college is a challenge that must be faced at the grade-school level, too.
``We have to draw our students from the public schools,'' he said. ``It's very complex and not just a problem that the schools of higher learning have to deal with. It's something the K-through-12 system has to look at, too.''
One alternative to race-based scholarships that's often discussed is need-based scholarships.
``I've gone through agony on this one,'' said Maurice R. Berube, an eminent professor of educational leadership at Old Dominion University. ``I've been flopping all over the place.
``But I've come to wonder if we might need to revise to a needs-based, income-based method, but putting African Americans, Hispanic Americans first. They're the ones we have to get into the pipeline. I don't think you can leave out race and gender entirely.''
Berube fears the affirmative action issue will be played out not in the halls of academia, but on the bloody stage of presidential politics.
Pete Wilson, governor of California, is running for president and has staked out one pole, for abolishing affirmative action. President Clinton on Wednesday staked out the other pole, stating firmly that affirmative action should be ``mended, not ended.''
``Clinton surprised me, probably like everybody, by coming out so strongly in defense of affirmative action,'' Berube said. ``Usually they say Clinton comes to a fork in the road, and he likes the fork.
``But it is going to end up in that election. That's it.''
Bousquet said: ``I think we're living in very mean-spirited times as a nation. I'm hoping the citizens of Virginia are a bit more compassionate than what we've seen elsewhere in the country.'' MEMO: Staff writers Robert Little and David M. Poole contributed to this
report.
by CNB