Black, Latino Enrollment Plunges at Texas Law School

AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas law school, forced to abandon affirmative action, began classes Wednesday with only four blacks and 26 Mexican Americans among 468 new students, according to preliminary enrollment figures.

The numbers were down from 31 blacks and 42 Mexican Americans last year.

Final enrollment figures won’t be known until Sept. 12. But UT reported that the 1997 law school class also should include 391 whites, 39 Asian Americans and eight other minorities, such as Native Americans, Puerto Ricans and Cuban Americans.

“The University of Texas School of Law is greatly distressed by the sharp reduction in the number of Mexican American and, most dramatically, of African American students enrolled in the 1997 entering class,” said law school dean M. Michael Sharlot.

School officials blamed the drop on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in a reverse-discrimination lawsuit that UT could no longer use race as a factor in admissions and scholarships. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed that decision to stand last year.

Law and medical schools in California experienced similar losses of minority students this year as a result of dismantling affirmative action. It hasn’t been determined whether minority applicants are simply switching to other schools or whether the new policies will result in a national decline in minorities with professional degrees.

The decline in the UT law school began with a drop in applications of 38% among blacks and 14% among Mexican Americans, compared with 7% among whites. The school received applications from 225 blacks, 306 Mexican Americans and 2,515 whites.

Of the 1,092 students granted admission, 11 were black, down from 65 last year, and 40 were Mexican American, down from 70. Admission of white students rose from 841 last year to 907, while overall admissions were down slightly from 1,105 to 1,092.

Getting those admitted to enroll presented another challenge.

Sharlot said UT must work under “very different and disadvantageous rules” in competing with other law schools for top students. He called that “particularly sad” because the Texas law school has produced more black and Mexican American lawyers during the past 10 years than any other school in the country.