A narrow majority of respondents - 53 percent - said they favor the University's use of race and ethnicity as a factor in admission, while 30 percent said admission decisions should be based solely on merit. Another 17 percent said they had no opinion or did not answer. The poll was conducted from Jan. 29 to Feb. 2 and has a margin of error of 4.7 percent with 95 percent confidence.
"In the admission process we're looking at a dozen or more variables for each applicant. Some are subjective, some are objective, and race can become one of those variables," said Dean of Admission James Miller '73. "It is not ever the sole factor. For any student there is no sole factor that determines admission."
Miller cited diversity as the major reason for employing affirmative action. "We are trying to construct a community that is as vibrant, as interesting and as talented as we can make it. Part of that involves making sure that people from all parts of society have a chance to come to Brown and take advantage of the opportunities here," Miller said.
"It is important, as America changes demographically, that places like Brown identify people who are going to be leaders in emerging communities and that we play a role in training them to be leaders," he added.
The extent to which race and ethnicity actually affect admission decisions at Brown and other private universities remains unclear, as private universities, unlike many public institutions, rarely disclose their admission data.
"Freedom of Information (Act) requests generally only apply to government institutions, such as large flagship state universities. They do not apply to private colleges or universities such as Brown, Princeton or Harvard. It's difficult to get reliable data from private institutions," said Edward Blum, a visiting fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
The racial and ethnic diversity of the Brown student body has remained roughly constant in recent decades. "The ethnic diversity of the class has been pretty consistent here, I would say for at least 20 years," said Brenda Allen, associate provost and director of institutional diversity.
Allen said diversity is critical to education. "With a diverse student body and diverse faculty you are able to provide your students with a range of ideas, opinions, outlooks and views. Literature on learning clearly establishes a relation between depth of learning and complexity of thinking," she said.
"Individuals bring something to the institution, not in spite of their background, but because of it," she added.
Students interviewed by The Herald expressed a variety of views on affirmative action, ranging from supportive to critical.
"A lot of people here come from a homogenous background. It's beneficial for them to be exposed to people who come from different walks of life, though I don't think that race and ethnicity are the only areas where that manifests itself," said Alex Dean '08.
"(Minority students) can contribute to our school's diversity without hurting our reputation in any way. All of the students of color here are really intelligent people, and many come from top schools," said Sheila Dugan '07. "I think it's more of an issue for schools that aren't as prestigious."
But other students said they disapprove of the practice.
"There is this notion that certain types of diversity - racial or ethnic - are some kind of an end in themselves. I don't buy that," said Pratik Chougule '08, editor in chief of the Brown Spectator, a conservative campus publication. "When you look at criteria such as academic achievement, athletic achievement, music or any number of things, that is the type of diversity you should be aiming for, not frivolous things like how dark one's skin complexion is."
Some students said they were ambivalent over the use of race in the admission process.
"I'm really torn on this one," said Alex Cox '08. "It almost ensures that race remains a major factor in making decisions in academia and society. If anything, we should be trying to move beyond that."
Other students said they think affirmative action compensates for the way race already operates in the admission process.
"It counteracts some inherent - possibly subconscious - racial stereotypes that we need to work toward eliminating," said Tor Tarantola '08, president of the Brown Democrats. "I think certain criteria that are important to success in college admissions are biased toward traditionally dominant racial groups. There is evidence that the SAT has a bias toward white, upper-middle class applicants because of the cultural content in the test."
The wide range of student responses reflects the heated national debate over affirmative action.
Over the past three decades, legislative and judicial actors have incrementally curtailed the practice of giving preference to individuals based on race and gender. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the use of racial quotas in college admission in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.
The Supreme Court in 2003 examined admission practices at the University of Michigan. In Gratz v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court ruled that the University of Michigan's two-track undergraduate admission system was unconstitutional - the university's policy gave a substantial advantage to applicants in certain racial groups without individual consideration.
In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, which prohibited the consideration of sex, race and ethnicity in public institutions, including state universities. Michigan voters passed the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative in 2006, banning affirmative action based on race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public education, employment and contracting purposes. On Jan. 19, 2007, the Supreme Court denied review to a legal challenge to the Michigan initiative.
More recently, private universities have come under fire for their use of affirmative action in admission. Jian Li, a freshman at Yale, has sought to get the federal government to cut off funding to Princeton University for an allegedly discriminatory admission policy that, Li claims, disadvantages Asian applicants. Jason Carr '09 and Neil Vangala '09 founded Asian Equality in Admissions to investigate similar concerns about admission at Brown.
