The National Association of Scholars, an organization dedicated to preserving academic integrity, wants state universities to publicly disclose their admissions policies with regard to how much weight they give racial and ethnic factors.
NAS is working in conjunction with two similar organizations -- the Center for Individual Rights and the Center for Equal Opportunity.
Roughly two weeks ago, NAS mailed a letter to the presidents of state universities in 20 states, including Michigan, Maryland and New Jersey. Pennsylvania was not included.
Since Penn is a private university, it is exempt from public records laws in many instances. The NAS has not contacted anyone at the University.
The letter requested, "Any statements or discussions of university policies, practices or procedures, formal or informal, relating to the use of racial and ethnic considerations in admissions to or eligibility for any undergraduate, graduate or professional school program, activity or benefit."
Under each state's public record disclosure laws, its state-run universities are legally obligated to comply with the NAS' request.
"We are not going into this assuming that any institution is acting illegally," said Bradford Wilson, the organization's executive director. "We're trying to find out the weight being given to race in admissions."
The NAS' actions come in the wake of the 2003 Supreme Court cases regarding the University of Michigan's affirmative action admissions policies. The ruling supported affirmative action programs as long as they are not "narrowly tailored," but declared Michigan's undergraduate policy unconstitutional.
Michigan has since expanded and revised its policy to be in compliance with the decisions, but the exact method remains unknown.
"The universities have had over half a year now to bring their race-based admissions policies into line with the Supreme Court rulings," Wilson said.
"It strikes us as certainly within the taxpaying public's right to know whether and to what extent universities that the public supports are using race to decide who gets in and who doesn't," he added.
Responses from schools thus far have been slow, an outcome Wilson expected. Most have appealed to NAS for more time to deliver the policy information or have requested a more specific version of the letter.
"In Michigan's case, they rejected our request as overly broad without asking us to refine it. They said that we have 90 days to appeal" under the state's Freedom of Information Act, Wilson said. The NAS is planning to do so.
"We will probably engage in some more back and forth before Michigan decides to come clean," he added.
In The State News, an independent newspaper at Michigan State University, University of Michigan spokeswoman Julie Peterson said of the letter, "Our response was that the request was too broad and we needed to clarify or better find out what they were looking for."
"But we never did receive a clarification of the request," she added.
Other schools are now in the process of responding to the NAS.
"We did receive the request from the NAS. We are reviewing university policy to do what would be responsive as well as what we are required to release under the law," University of Maryland spokeswoman Cassandra Robinson said.
