When we brought these obvious flaws to MIT's attention, the university initially ignored our warnings. But after OCR began reviewing our formal complaint against the MIT program, the university suddenly announced it would admit whites and Asians. Since the investigation is ongoing, information on exactly what changes will be made remain sketchy. But we're confident the school will not go back to its crude, racially exclusive program.
It is too bad it has taken threats of legal action to get colleges and universities to stop segregating students by race under the guise of promoting diversity. Many schools have been hiding discriminatory programs behind the façade of equal access for years -- until someone was willing to shine the light on what they were doing and demand that they stop.
The schools' traditional argument has been that racially exclusive programs are necessary to ensure sufficient numbers of black and Hispanic students. But the reality is that the most elite schools often engage in cutthroat bidding wars to recruit from among the same pool of high-performing minority students.
Only about 1,900 black students in the entire United States scored 1300 or higher on the SATs last year, compared with more than 148,000 students from other racial groups. Schools like MIT, Princeton, Amherst and others are willing to spend huge amounts of money and resources to attract these students.
The Supreme Court's decisions in the two University of Michigan cases this summer should help eliminate the most egregious race-based programs. But until the court rejects race, once and for all, as a legitimate factor in making admissions decisions, colleges will continue to come up with creative ways to discriminate against some students while favoring others simply because they happen to be the "wrong" race or ethnicity.
As long as colleges pursue this course, however, we'll be there to catch them in the act.