US universities in race quota row

It seemed little more than a personal tragedy when the University of Michigan rejected Jennifer Gratz, a promising high school student with impeccable grades, for a place at its prestigious college of literature, science and arts.

Nine years later the case is before the US Supreme Court and has become one of the most controversial civil rights issues in the country, pitting President George W. Bush against the hero of the 1991 Gulf war, Norman Schwarzkopf.

At stake is the right of universities to consider race when assessing suitability for admission, and the future of the 50-year-old 'affirmative action' campaign that seeks to give racial minorities a greater presence in US colleges of higher education.

The nine Supreme Court judges have until July to rule on whether the practice is legitimate on the grounds of promoting racial diversity or whether it infringes a clause in the US constitution that guarantees equal opportunity to all, regardless of sex, race or religion.

Gratz, who is white, dreamed of a career in medicine when, at 17, she applied for a place at Michigan's flagship college in 1994. With an exemplary grade average of 3.8 out of 4, glowing tutor references and a long list of extra-curricular achievements, she appeared the perfect candidate. But Gratz fell victim to Michigan's points-based admissions policy for undergraduates, by which candidates from racial minorities receive an automatic head start.

'Had I been black, Hispanic or Native American, I would have had a 100 per cent chance of admission with my grades and record,' said Gratz, 26, now a training specialist for a California software company.

Her case is linked with that of Patrick Hamacher, rejected by the same college two years later. The Supreme Court will also rule on an action by Barbara Grutter, turned down by University of Michigan's law school in 1996 at the age of 43. All three are Michigan natives.

The hearings drew 7,000 protesters to Washington DC, including civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and Senator Edward Kennedy, and represented the first direct challenge to the affirmative action laws in higher education for 25 years.

The lawsuits were brought by Washington's Centre for Individual Rights, which has heavyweight support. President Bush filed a brief to the court arguing that Michigan's policies were 'fundamentally flawed'. 'Quota systems that use race to include or exclude people from higher education are divisive, unfair and impossible to square with the constitution,' Bush said.

Critics have pointed out that Bush himself was a beneficiary of affirmative action when awarded a place at his father's former university, Yale, in 1968 despite not attaining the necessary grades.

Michigan, which says more than 15 per cent of its students are from minority groups, defends its policies on the grounds that it promotes a diverse racial mix on campus. Former university president Lee Bollinger, a defendant in the two lawsuits, says a ruling against Michigan would lead to a massive drop in the numbers of minority students at all universities and therefore a backdoor return to segregation.

The Supreme Court has received more than 300 depositions, both for and against Michigan, from major corporations, unions, universities, student bodies and a military panel that includes Schwarzkopf. Any court ruling would affect the US army, navy and air force academies, which all use race in their admission policies, contributing to a 40 per cent minority representation in the armed services.

The panel said: 'The military must be permitted to train and educate a diverse officer corps,' citing discipline and morale problems in Vietnam when mostly white officers commanded significant numbers of minority troops.

Kirk Kolbo, the lawyer for the Centre for Individual Rights, said Michigan had broken 'every test the Supreme Court has used' in denying the two women places to study. 'It is a thinly-disguised quota system that overtly implies discrimination.

'In a society like the United States, it is crucial for the government to honour its solemn oath of equality,' he said.