Solution ONE

I think this is a good solution to the problem of affirmative action placing racial preferences in college admissions. so basically solution numero uno.

But in California, one of the country's major affirmative action laboratories, the "end it" argument proved more popular. Racial/ethnic preferences had become a major issue in a state whose minority population was booming. California's higher-education system also included two of the nation's top public institutions: the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) and UCLA.

Among many white, Anglo Californians, affirmative action had come to be seen as a system under which black and Latino applicants were getting into those two schools at the expense of whites or Asians with higher grades and SAT scores.

By 1996, the statewide university system's majority-Republican Board of Regents voted to end all race, ethnic and gender preferences in admissions. The board did allow universities to take applicants' socioeconomic circumstances into account.

And in the same year, California voters approved Proposition 209, which outlawed all race, ethnicity and gender preferences by all state entities. Connerly helped organize that referendum and followed up with successful campaigns in Washington state in 1998 and in Michigan in 2003.

Meanwhile, the "reverse discrimination" issue that had been decided in the Bakke case flared up in Texas, where Cheryl Hopwood and two other white applicants to the University of Texas law school challenged their rejections, pointing to the admissions of minority students with lower grades and test scores. In 1996, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided for the plaintiffs, ruling that universities couldn't take race into account when assessing applicants.

The appeals judges had overruled the Bakke decision, at least in their jurisdiction of Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana, yet the Supreme Court refused to consider the case.

But in 2003, the justices ruled on two separate cases, both centering on admissions to another top-ranked public higher education system: the University of Michigan. One case arose from admissions procedures for the undergraduate college, the other from the system for evaluating applicants to the university's law school.

The Supreme Court decided against the undergraduate admissions policy because it automatically awarded 20 extra points on the university's 150-point evaluation scale to blacks, Latinos and American Indians. By contrast, the law school took race into account in what Justice O'Connor, in the majority opinion in the 5-4 decision, called a "highly individualized, holistic review" of each candidate aimed at producing a diverse student population.

SOOOO in my opinion,
the bottom line is we should propose a Nationwide law that states: universities cannot take race into account in undergrad and grad school admissions.
This will bar racial preference and quotas.
If we want diverse colleges, we must reform k-12 education and prepare minorites and low income students for higher education... as in improving statistics like this:

“In CA, 36 percent of all high school students in 2001 had taken all the courses required for admission to the state university system, according to a study by the civil rights project at Harvard university. Among black students, only 26 percent had taken the prerequisites and only 24 percent of Hispanics. Meanwhile, 41 percent of white and 54 percent of Asians had taken the necessary courses.” (20) (from the 36 page article)

Its just like President Lyndon B. Johnson said in a major speech that laid the foundations for affirmative action programs, although they werent set up for another five years after:
"You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'You are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair, " (To Fulfill These Rights, a 1965 commencement speech at Howard University in Washington, DC, a top black institution)


However,
Thats not to say that admissions officers must ignore an applicants background if part of his/her personal statement essay includes that. I.E. my father's real life American Dream of reaching the land of freedom and opportunity has inspired me to be all i can be, etc etc.

Any thoughts?