The Red & Black Across the South, many colleges struggle with the same racial diversity troubles facing the University, where schools want to balance minority preferences with merit-based admissions.

The University recently was sued by four white women claiming discrimination and now is re-evaluating its admissions process.

The University of Texas is currently facing legal troubles similar to those here. Four white applicants sued Texas in 1994, claiming they were discriminated against because they weren’t minorities.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ policies were unconstitutional and the university could no longer use race as a factor in admissions or financial aid.

“This decision lead to a drastic reduction in the amount of African-Americans and Mexican-Americans enrolled in the law school,” said Thomas Russell, professor of law and history at the University of Texas. “We have fewer black students in the school of law today than we did when we first integrated in 1950.”

Texas is still involved in court proceedings, trying to overturn the ruling. Russell said that diversity is worth the court proceedings for both universities and state governments.

 “Diversity enriches the students’ experience, and it makes the state stronger by educating its people,” Russell said. “It’s like having a dinner party — the more interesting and different the people you invite, the better the discussion.”

In contrast to the University and Texas, the University of Tennessee’s admissions officials are facing legal pressures to recruit minorities. Tennessee is currently under the Geier Court Order, a state mandate that calls for all public universities to raise their enrollment of black students. This order gives Tennessee the right to give preference to black students if they choose, but the university hasn’t changed its current policy of admitting students based solely on grades and test scores.

“The Geier mandate requires us to raise our black enrollment to 11 percent by 2000,” said Patrick Wade, an admissions counselor at Tennessee. “Right now, we’re at 5 percent. I don’t see it happening.”

Tennessee does offer a full scholarship to black students that pays tuition and board. “The African-American Achievers Scholarship is our effort to recruit black students,” Wade said. “For now, that’s all we’re doing.”

Around the state, institutes of higher education have varied policies that, so far, have avoided legal controversy. Georgia Tech uses a blind admissions policy where only test scores and GPAs are taken into consideration, but the school does give preference to in-state applicants, admissions officials said. Georgia Tech officials said that while they don’t give admissions preferences, they do recruit women and under-represented minorities.

“Unlike the University of Georgia, women are considered a minority here,” said Deborah Smith, director of undergraduate admissions at Georgia Tech. “We target them during recruitment but not during the admissions process.”

Prior to the 1990s, Georgia Tech did use affirmative action in their admissions. “In the 1970s and ’80s, Tech gave women, blacks and Hispanics the same preference that we now give to in-state residents,” Smith said.

The same blind admissions policy is used at Georgia State University, officials said. “Georgia State uses no conditional admission, whatsoever,” said Frank Sillee, an admissions counselor at Georgia State. Georgia State once recruited minorities, but ended that policy around 1996, Sillee said.

One of the state’s historically black schools, Morehouse College in Atlanta, doesn’t factor an applicants’ race in its admissions process. “There shouldn’t be any admission points given to any students,” said Danny Bellinger, an admissions counselor at Morehouse. “Our white and international students are here because they met the academic requirements to get in.”