In today's Michigan Daily, former University of Michigan president James Duderstadt offers his thoughts on how UM might go about improving the diversity of the student body. Duderstadt notes that under President Lee Bollinger, many of UM's minority recruitment programs were discontinued, and that as a result an overall increase in minority enrollment at UM has been accompanied by a substantial decrease in black enrollment: between 1994 and 2002, minority enrollment at UM rose from 20% to 26%, but black enrollment decreased by 10%. At the business school, it has decreased by over 50%: 200 blacks were enrolled there in 1994, but less than 100 were enrolled there last year.

To rectify the problem, Duderstadt outlines an admissions policy that would do away with the problematic point system that has earned UM a place on the Supreme Court's docket this year, and that would instead seek to increase diversity by looking more closely at the "whole application":

Duderstadt said he would like to see the University initiate a more subjective process for admissions applications. He added that race might not be as necessary a factor if the University took on a more subjective process, looking at applications, essays and recommendations in depth rather than just assigning points. Currently, the undergraduate colleges admit students based on a 150-point selective index based on factors including high school grades, SAT and ACT scores, an essay and race.

"I think if the University were to make a substantial investment in its admissions office and stack it and really devote the time and attention to evaluate the whole application ... then I think we might be able to build a very diverse class," Duderstadt said.

Boasting one of the largest undergraduate populations in the nation and receiving 25,000 applications for the class of 2006, the University does not currently have time or resources to fully examine each application. But spokeswoman Julie Peterson said all factors of admissions, including outreach, the use of race and mentoring are necessary in order to maintain a diverse campus.

"You need outreach and recruiting, financial aid and mentoring," Peterson said. "All these things need to be in play."

Rice says it remains fiercely committed to having a diverse student body, so in the years since, it has developed creative, even sly ways to meet that goal and still obey the court. Thus the admissions committee, with an undisguised wink, has encouraged applicants to discuss "cultural traditions" in their essays, asked if they spoke English as a second language and taken note, albeit silently, of those identified as presidents of their black student associations.

Those efforts, along with stepped-up recruiting at high schools with traditionally high minority populations, yielded a freshman class last year with a near-record composition of blacks and Hispanics. Of the 700 freshmen, 7 percent are black, 11 percent Hispanic.

Duderstadt's vision of how UM might revamp its admissions process is implicitly a vision of how it might continue to seek to admit racially diverse classes if--or when--its current point system is struck down. Presented as a picture of how UM should probably have been handling admissions all along, Duderstadt's vision casts Michigan's present point system not as a quota system, but as the inevitable result of an inadequate admissions budget. The implication is not only that UM ought absolutely to continue its quest for an ideal racial balance among its students, but should spend whatever it costs to assemble an admissions office capable of giving every last one of its 25,000 annual applications the all-important personal--or, in Duderstadt's words, "subjective"--touch.