They Let Hopwood Do their Talking

Texas A&M Regents Say Nothing in Writing
About Race or Affirmative Action

On Dec. 9, 2003 the Texas Civil Rights Review filed a Texas Open Records Request asking for all the supporting documents that were provided to the Board of Regents of the Texas A&M University System pertaining to their Dec. 5 decision to change admissions standards.

The decision was widely reported as abolishing affirmative action in admissions. The four sheets of paper returned in response to that request are shown here, along with a letter confirming that the Board of Regents consider this a responsive reply. As you can see from these scanned documents, the Regents put nothing in writing about race or affirmative action.

Texas A&M Board of Regents adopted affirmative action in 1980 as a sign of its own 'good faith' commitment to de-segregation. Since Texas has not yet completed the process of de-segregation, the plain expectation of 'good faith' would be to reinstate affirmative action now that Grutter has superseded Hopwood as law of the land. But by doing nothing, by simply extending the Hopwood revocation, and by offering no written explanation, the Regents have effected a kind of 'pocket veto' of Grutter. This is not 'good faith.' When a peculiar 'civil rights' path has been chosen by administrative elites, deep in the heart of Texas, without any documentation whatsoever, one feels a shudder of recognition, that this is what it looks like up close. Note: I have whited out my home address and the name of the System administrator who was placed in charge of responding to the request.