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- THE WEEK, Page 32SOCIETYBack to Bakke
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- Berkeley's law school agrees to change its admissions procedures
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- Tiptoeing along the fine line that separates affirmative
- action from reverse discrimination is a delicate act. At Boalt
- Hall, the law school of the University of California at Berkeley,
- they thought they had it right with an admissions policy that
- since 1968 has aimed for an enrollment of 23% to 27% minority
- students. But last week, after a two-year investigation, the
- Department of Education announced that Berkeley had gone too far
- in accommodating minorities. The university denied any
- wrongdoing but said it would consider dropping ethnicity or race
- as a determining factor in selecting law school applicants from
- its waiting list. It may also halt the practice of assigning all
- applications from a single minority group to one admissions
- team. But the law school vows to continue giving "special
- consideration" to minority applicants and even to maintain
- "target" ranges for minority enrollment.
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- The prolonged investigation of Boalt Hall has worried
- universities already struggling to chart a path between the 1964
- Civil Rights Act, which outlaws racial discrimination, and the
- 1978 Supreme Court decision in the case of white medical school
- applicant Allan Bakke, which bans reverse discrimination and
- racial quotas.
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