Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) has agreed to eliminate racial selection during its admission process.
“By going beyond the law to enshrine an extreme agenda, this agreement represents a federal government that seeks to preserve white privilege rather than to secure equal opportunity,” Thomas A. Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told NPR.
The race selection practice, which offers underrepresented minorities an opportunity of admittance, was first made widely known by a 2005 complaint against the school from the Center of Equal Opportunity, a conservative organization that opposes affirmative action.
In response to the complaint, the civil rights unit of the U.S. Department of Education launched a 14-year investigation into the university’s health and science admissions offices. The probe resulted in a first-of-its-kind resolution between a school and the federal government branch to end the use of race as an determining factor for undergraduate and medical school and health sciences admissions, according to NPR.
Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, wrote a response in the National Review calling the agreement a victory and praised President Donald Trump’s administration for being “serious about enforcing civil rights laws.”
“The more schools there are that do not use racial preferences, the harder it becomes for other schools to justify their use,” Chegg wrote.
The Trump administration is also investigating Harvard and Yale to determine if the use of race in the admissions process is affecting Asian Americans, according to an investigation launched in August by the Department of Justice.
In a statement from the school, a spokeswoman said Texas Tech is “committed to a diverse and inclusive medical education and experience” and the school is “committed to holistic alternatives to enhancing diversity while ensuring it is appropriately and lawfully considering an applicant’s race and/or national origin in its admissions process.”
TTUHSC was recently ranked eighth in the country among top “minority producers” of health degrees, according to the school’s statement. The TTUHSC School of Medicine is committed to holistic alternatives to enhancing diversity while ensuring it is appropriately and lawfully considering an applicant’s race and, national origin, or both in its admissions process, the statement said.
