Race-Blind Admissions at the University of Texas-Austin Article

Race-Blind Admissions at the University of Texas-Austin - Article Example Ultimately, the outcomes that the policy yielded through the passage of time tended to prove the policy to be a deprivation of opportunity. The policy for the Race-blind Admission taken by the authority of the University of Texas is a milestone and at the same time, an epoch-making event in the US history of building a race-blind nation that will stand unified at one platform. The admission policy is exemplary in the sense that it was proficient enough to meet both the legal guidelines of the court and the pressing requirements diversity that was usually maintained under the Affirmative Actions in the pre-Hopwood admission policies. The issue of minority enrollment in the education has been an issue of the struggle for decades in the history of Texas. A number of measures have been adopted to increase the enrollment of the minority students and been changed to meet the ever-changing requirements of the time. After a verdict of the Federal court in 1996, the Texas Authority was pushed to modify the race-conscious admission policies in order to retain the diversity at states colleges and universities. Without directly focusing on the applicants’ ethnicity, the state lawmakers instituted Top Ten Percent Plan to ensure an automatic admission to any public universities in Texas. The plan that was enacted by the 75th Legislature served a two-fold purpose: to meet the requirements of diversity and to face the law of equal opportunity (Barr, 2005, p. 1). It is evident that the pre-Hopwood admission policy was outlawed on the ground that it goes against the US constitution. But the fact whether the policy adopted by the University Authority and the state legislators in the post Hopwood period was capable enough of bridging the hollering racial gaps existing in the US society may engender controversy.