The case is heading back to the Supreme Court and I think Abigail seriously needs to let this one go. Everyone cannot get in everywhere. Just drop the lawsuit. It’s been 7 years. She could have gone to college and then get a masters from UT Austin in the time that it has taken for her to whine about her rejection. She has really taken sour grapes to a whole new level.
Her entire case is predicated on the argument that she saw students with lower grades and fewer activities than her get accepted. Her evidence for this lawsuit is either incorrect, or is woefully inefficient because she based this entire case on fewer than 5 acceptances out of the hundreds UT accepts who don’t fall in the top 10%.
UT Austin should just be 100% URM already, same goes for HYPSM, and all of the nation’s magnet high schools and gifted programs, so we can stop having these arguments.
I disagree that she needs to just drop her suit. Although I am personally for affirmative action, The issue of the role that race can play in college admission from a constitutional standpoint is an important one. Because these cases take years to reach the US Supreme Court and may be as this case was sent down temporarily, they will evade ultimate review if the case does not continue on when the plaintiff has moved on /graduated from another school. The united states supreme court takes very few cases. The fact that they are taking this one twice is extraordinary. From the standpoint of having this issue decided, it’s very important that the case continue at this point. The court would not have taken her case again unless they felt it was important to decide the case. I think that those who wrote the article saying it was time to move on assumed, as most people did, that the US Supreme Court would never take the case again.
She probably cannot walk away from the Ed Blum machine that has been scrapping the bottom of the barrel to find a candidate for his political games. She has become a cause celebre and cannot abandon this frivolous pursuit without losing face, In the end, she wants to be a martyr as she cannot obtain redress.
Ed Blum will pursue his agenda until one case finally sticks.
I am so over Abigail Fisher. I wish someone would have just told her to accept that her academic record just wasn’t good enough at an increasingly selective public flagship instead of letting her make herself a victim.
@xiggi. If her suit was "frivolous " there is no way the US Supreme Court would have granted cert again. She may not win but to call the suit frivolous shows a lack of understanding of how the Supreme Court works.
Liberals are seriously concerned that w elana kagan recused, this case will likely result in significant narrowing, if not banning altogether, of the use of race as an admissions criterion. It’ll all come down to Kennedy, and he’s not a fan of race-conscious college admissions.
If gays are entitled to equal protection under the law, then so should students irrespective of race.
I’m pretty torn on affirmative action. I personally didn’t benefit from it when I identified myself as Caucasian on my college application a few months ago, but I believe that a public college should be able to diversify their incoming class. Then again, like GMT said, it would be fair for all students which is why I will not make up my mind.
Question: Private colleges are exempt from any affirmative action ban, correct?
The small numbers quoted above make you wonder how many of those students were just well connected regardless of race. An independent study has already shown that well connected students were let in at the request of the previous president. Who the connections were and how they might have benefited (political contributions, etc.) are the subject of a bitter dispute between a current regent and the UT system.
It would be interesting to see how many people who are annoyed that Ms. Fischer is still the named plaintiff in this case felt the same way about Jane Roe.
That is exactly what Ed Blum’s playbook is based on. He has been playing the White Card with Abigail Fisher and dragging his net in the Asian community with the lawsuits against Harvard, among others. The cases are whimsical on the contents of the allegations but they become fair game in a political arena. The saddest part is the decisions might end up supporting a cast of unsavory or undeserving characters.
Ultimately, the opponents to affirmative action will find a case that sticks and prompts drastic revision of the AA legislations. It would amazing that a negative decision would stem from Texas that has implemented a policy that is mostly race blind.
Imagine that a passenger, complaining about racially divided bus, is told, “what’s s the big deal? All busses are following the same route. Anyway, since you got home already, does it really matter?” Not fair. Any discrimination is not fair, IMHO.
Fisher was discriminated on the basis of race. You may say that “she could have had better grades, she got education anyway, what’s the big deal?”. Any discrimination on the basis of race is not fair, IMHO. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. If you want to select gifted but disadvantaged kids, there is a million of ways to do it, starting with building relationships between colleges and schools (starting at middle school, not in the 12-th grade!).
I am not used to be categorized by race. It is such a weird feeling. Especially, for multi-ethnic-racial families
This is the other issue, that I have with affirmative action / holistic approach. It is marketed as “help to disadvantaged”. In reality (IMHO) is creates a non-transparency. In this cloud of non-transparency well-connected students are admitted (donors, alumni, children of faculty, children of politicians, etc.).
