Michigan Higher Ed Leaders
Look Beyond Proposal 2
By Reginald Stuart
In Maya Weitzer’s world, Nov. 7 will be remembered as a significant day. It was on that day, as Michigan voters were going to the polls, that the 17-year-old senior at West Bloomfield High School in Oakland County, Mich., learned she had been accepted into the University of Michigan for the Fall 2007 term.
“It was a mild freak out,” says Weitzer, who has a 4.0 GPA and is a member of her school’s swim team and newspaper staff. “I did a lot of jumping and ran and told all my friends. It was a good moment.”
Little did Weitzer know that her notice may have been one of the last issued by the school under its current admissions procedure, which allows an assortment of considerations, including sex and race, in determining which applicants to admit. On Weitzer’s big day, Michigan voters opted to put a halt to such practices, meaning she might be attending a school whose demographics may change dramatically by the time she graduates.
By a wide margin, voters approved Proposal 2, a ballot issue that bans “affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment, education or contracting purposes.”
Weitzer says she doesn’t know what criteria was used in determining her admission, but she hopes her grades and range of extracurricular activities are what got her in. She says she wonders whether the university will be forced to withdraw her offer. UM officials don’t discuss admissions decisions regarding specific students.
