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Erin Rogers
Caruso
UWRT 1103-017
November 9, 2015
Affirmative Action
The issue of diversity and its place in classrooms has been a controversial subject for
years. Many believe having a diverse school is beneficial and according to recent studies this is
proven to be true. However, the question of how to get diversity in schools without being
unfair is a challenging one. When affirmative action was first brought to the attention of the
public in 1961 as a way to create diversity, the debate on whether its helpful or harmful came
into effect right away. For over 50 years people have been going back and fourth between
keeping it and banning it but now change is starting to take place. The negative aspects of
affirmative are starting to outweigh the positives and more and more court decisions are resulting
in the limitation of this process in admissions. Other race neutral programs are starting to be
implemented and are replacing affirmative action.
Many of the new policies that universities are using in their admissions process include
percent plans. California, Texas, and Florida have all adapted this to try and create diversity
without looking at race itself. They replaced former affirmative action guidelines and guarantee
students who rank within a certain percentage of their schools senior class admission to state
universities (). The purpose of the race-neutral program is to maintain diversity by allowing
students from all schools and geographic areas to get into colleges. Although this is the goal in a
recent court case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the question of whether race-neutral
methods, such as TTP, could accomplish the same goal (Daughtrey) came up. If there is enough

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evidence and information to backup these new methods the result of this court case could be the
ban of affirmative action. The university would need to come up with new ways to create
diversity without using race as a factor. Although, percent plans are a race neutral programs
controversy still exists and a method that is fair and creates diversity is yet to be discovered.
Studies have showed that just like affirmative action the percent plans have their own
downfalls. With the Talented 20 program in Florida, it was found that the minority tend to be
found in poor-performing schools that do not provide the classes needed for Talented-20
consideration (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights). As a result minorities are being
unrepresented because they are still at an unfair advantage due to socioeconomic reasons. The
ten percent plan in Texas showed similar results where there was a decrease in the number of
blacks and Hispanics being represented in universities compared to whites. Along with this the
mismatch theory is becoming an issue as well.

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Works Cited
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