No backtracking allowed on Texas 10 percent admission law

The backtracking by the Texas House of Representatives on the top 10 percent rule for high school seniors for admission to a Texas state university is not good news if you live in a rural community, are less-than-wealthy or possessing skin OTHER than Caucasian.
Under House Bill 2330, which passed last Thursday (May 12) by a 73-69 margin, states that no college would have to accept more than HALF of its freshman class on the basis of senior class rank. Despite any kind of propaganda by the bill’s sponsor, Republican Geanie Morrison of Victoria, it is a step backward for diversity and a major step backwards for offering opportunity to a large segment of the state’s population.
Right now, following the UT-Hopwood decision, state law guarantees admission to the top 10 percent of Texas high school graduates. That means the top seven students from a small South Texas high school that graduates 70 students would have the same chance to enter the University of Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M or any state school as the top graduates from the largest high school classes – Plano, Plano East, Plano West, Highland Park and many, many more.
Thanks to the efforts of Dallas State Senator Royce West, that chamber has kept the 10 percent rule intact but strengthened academic requirements. Hopefully that would prevent an occurrence where one year, the salutatorian (second-ranked graduate) at Wilmer-Hutchins High School possessed less than an 80 grade average.
This stink started with the University of Texas at Austin people because, lo and behold, 72 percent of students admitted from Texas high schools for this summer and fall qualified under the top 10 percent rule.
And what exactly is WRONG with that? It produces student body diversity without forcing things like racial quotas into the equation. BUT it also pits those suburban students against urban minorities and rural students.
Morrison, during the debate, said the bill already included racial and geographical diversity as a goal for 2015 – which, my friends, is a LONG way away. She said she didn’t want to “get rid of the Top 10 percent law” and is not opposed to diversity.
“I think this bill achieves higher diversity, not lessens it,” she said.
Any retreat on the 10 percent law would be saying to those students that they aren’t good enough to go to Austin or College Station and that learn to love junior college or smaller schools.
That kind of bullying should not be tolerated in the Legislature or in the state by taxpayers.