Grim milestone: Texas set to execute 500th inmate

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) ? Jim Willett remembers the night of Dec. 6, 1982, when he was assigned to guard a mortuary van that had arrived at the death house at the Huntsville prison.

"I remember thinking: We're really going to do this. This is really going to happen," says Willett, who was a captain for the Texas Department of Corrections.

When the van pulled away early the next morning, it carried to a nearby funeral home the body of convicted killer Charlie Brooks, who had just become the first Texas prisoner executed since a Supreme Court ruling six years earlier allowed the death penalty to resume in the United States.

What was unusual then has become rote. On Wednesday, barring a reprieve, Kimberly McCarthy will become the 500th convicted killer in Texas to receive a lethal injection.

The number far outpaces the execution total in any other state. But it also reflects the reality of capital punishment in the United States today: While some states have halted the practice in recent years because of concern about wrongful convictions, executions continue at a steady pace in many others.

The death penalty is on the books in 32 states. On average, Texas executes an inmate about every three weeks.

Still, even as McCarthy prepares to die at the Huntsville Unit, it's clear that Texas, too, has been affected by the debate over capital punishment. In recent years, state lawmakers have provided more sentencing options for juries and courts have narrowed the cases in which the death penalty can be applied. In guaranteeing DNA testing for inmates and providing for sentences of life without parole, Texas could well be on a slower track to execute its next 500 inmates.

"It's a very fragile system" as attitudes change, said Mark White, who was Texas attorney general when Brooks was executed and then presided over 19 executions as governor from 1983 to 1987.

"There's a big difference between fair and harsh. ... I think you have (Texas) getting a reputation for being bloodthirsty, and that's not good."

Texas has accounted for nearly 40 percent of the more than 1,300 executions carried out since murderer Gary Gilmore went before a Utah firing squad in 1977 and became the first U.S. inmate executed following the Supreme Court's clarification of death penalty laws. (Texas had more than 300 executions before the pause.) Virginia is a distant second, nearly 400 executions behind. Texas' standing stems both from its size, with the nation's second largest population, and its tradition of tough justice for killers.

Still awaiting punishment in Texas are 282 convicted murderers.

Some may be spared. Supreme Court rulings have now excluded mentally impaired people or those who were under 18 at the time of their crime. Legal battles continue over the lethal drugs used in the process, mental competence of inmates, professional competence of defense lawyers and sufficiency of evidence in light of DNA forensics technology.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has presided over more than half of the state's executions, said that the recent changes have helped make Texas' system fairer. In addition to the new sentencing options, he signed bills to allow post-conviction DNA testing for inmates and establish minimum qualifications for court-appointed defense attorneys.

"I think our process works just fine," Perry said last year during his unsuccessful presidential campaign. "You may not agree with them, but we believe in our form of justice. ... We think it is clearly appropriate."

So do most Texans.

A 2012 poll from the Texas Tribune and the University of Texas showed only 21 percent opposed to capital punishment.

Still, re-examinations of convictions have raised questions about whether some of those executed may have been innocent. The suspect cases included the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham for the arson deaths of his three young children. Arson experts consulted by a state panel determined evidence used to gain the conviction did not meet scientific standards. But Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott later barred the panel from further review of the trial evidence.

Over the years, the Texas execution list has provided a portrait of violent crime in a state where many people are armed, both good and bad, and juries have little tolerance for murderers.

Those executed have ranged from relatively common cases ? robbers who killed store clerks, drug users who killed other drug users, spouses killing each other ? to the bizarre and sensational. Ronald Clark O'Bryan, nicknamed the "Candy Man," poisoned his son's Halloween candy to collect on an insurance policy. Angel Resendez, a serial killer, rode the rails, stopping along the way to murder strangers. Lawrence Russell Brewer dragged a black man behind a pickup truck in a racist killing.

In the prison town of Huntsville, executions have become a well-worn ritual.

For more than 20 years, Dennis Longmire has been a fixture outside the fortress-like prison on execution evenings, holding a lit candle on a street corner. Hundreds of demonstrators once gathered there but interest has long since subsided.

"Texas continues to march to a different beat," as other states drop the death penalty, says Longmire, a criminal justice professor at nearby Sam Houston State University. He calls the execution total "staggering."

McCarthy, convicted of killing a 71-year-old neighbor during a robbery in 1997, is among eight inmates scheduled for execution over the next four months. She would be the first female put to death in the U.S. in three years and the 13th woman since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume.

McCarthy, 52, was condemned for using a butcher knife and candelabra to beat and fatally stab retired college professor Dorothy Booth at the victim's Lancaster home. Evidence showed the former nursing home therapist used the knife to sever Booth's finger to steal her wedding ring.

McCarthy, who is linked to two other slayings, already has had her execution date pushed back twice this year. Her attorney, Maurie Levin, is trying to halt her execution again, contending black jurors improperly were excluded from her trial by Dallas County prosecutors.

Levin said there has been a "pervasive influence of race in administration of the death penalty and the inadequacy of counsel ? a longstanding issue here."

Even remarkable incidents in the death ritual can become mundane in the steady procession.

In 2000, Ponchai Wilkerson stunned officials when he spit out a small handcuff key he had kept hidden in his mouth as he prepared to die.

"In another state you live with that for a long time," said Willett, who became warden at the Huntsville Unit in 1998 and oversaw 89 executions. "Here in Texas, another one is coming a few days later and you've forgotten that one before."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/grim-milestone-texas-set-execute-500th-inmate-162259097.html

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Ahron Hakimi Named Mineta Transportation Institute Alumnus of the Year

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Ahron R. Hakimi, executive director of the Kern Council of Governments, has been named the first Alumnus of the Year for the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI). He earned his Master of Science in Transportation Management (MSTM) in 2003 through the MTI program at San Jose State University. His award was given at a scholarship banquet and convocation on campus Saturday evening, June 22.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100318/MTILOGO)

"The MTI Alumni Association members nominated candidates online," said Peter Haas, PhD, education director for MTI. "Criteria were stringent, and the Institute is pleased to have such an outstanding transportation professional rise to the top. Even as a student, Ahron demonstrated notable leadership abilities, which he has continued to carry into his impressive career."

Mr. Hakimi assumed his position with the Kern Council of Governments (COG) in June 2012. A colonel in the Army Reserve's Logistics Corps and a supervising transportation engineer with Caltrans, he was previously the lead state official for the Thomas Road Improvement Program (TRIP), a unique multi-agency coalition comprising the City of Bakersfield, County of Kern, Caltrans and Kern COG.

Arriving in Bakersfield in 1991, Mr. Hakimi worked in the local Caltrans office, reporting to District 6 officials in Fresno. In 2003, he began working on joint projects with the city of Bakersfield. He has been personally accountable for delivering several high-profile, politically sensitive federal highway projects valued at more than $1.5 billion, including auxiliary lanes installed at the State Route 58/99 interchange in 2007, easing traffic flow for thousands of drivers.

Mr. Hakimi has served as a TRIP liaison among Bakersfield City Council members, Kern County supervisors, and state and federal legislators to ensure projects are completed on schedule and within budget, including the Westside Parkway now under construction.

With more than 26 years of military service, including combat tours in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, he was awarded the Bronze Star in 2005 and has received the Meritorious Service Medal four times.?In addition to his MSTM, Mr. Hakimi received his Master of Strategic Studies from the US Army War College and a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn NY.

Walter Allen, a transportation planner with Parsons Transportation Group and president of the MTI Alumni Association, said, "Ahron exemplifies all the necessary criteria for this award. He has attained notable achievements in his career; succeeded in other areas of professional or personal excellence; and demonstrated distinguished commitment and leadership within the transportation industry. The Alumni Association is very happy to inaugurate this annual award with someone of Ahron's caliber."

ABOUT THE MINETA TRANSPORTATION INSTITUTE (MTI):
MTI conducts research, education, and information transfer programs focusing on surface transportation policy and management issues, especially related to transit. MTI was established by Congress in 1991 as part of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act and won national re-designation competitions in 2002, 2006 and 2011. The Institute is funded by Congress through the US DOT Research and Innovative Technology Administration, by the California Legislature through Caltrans, and public and private grants. In 2006 the US Department of Homeland Security selected MTI as a National Transportation Security Center of Excellence. The internationally respected members of the MTI Board of Trustees represent all major surface transportation modes. MTI is affiliated with San Jose (CA) State University's College of Business. Visit transweb.sjsu.edu

ABOUT THE MASTER OF SCIENCE IN TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT (MSTM):
The College of Business at San Jose State University,?with support from the Mineta Transportation Institute, offers a Master of Science degree and three graduate certificate programs.?The curriculum is led by nationally recognized instructors who are academic or industry experts. The MSTM program is fully accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). The program is accelerated, enabling students to complete an MSTM degree in five semesters. Classes are held in the evening so students can continue to work full time while earning their degrees. The program is available statewide at designated Caltrans district offices and other participating transportation agencies. Classes are delivered by two-way video conferencing supplemented by video streaming and web courseware. Visit transweb.sjsu.edu and go to the Education tab.

Contact: Donna Maurillo
MTI Communications Director
831-234-4009 (mobile)
donna.maurillo (at) sjsu.edu

SOURCE Mineta Transportation Institute

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ahron-hakimi-named-mineta-transportation-institute-alumnus-223700985.html

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?Our Sisters in Headscarves?

A supporter of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip?Erdo?an during a rally on June 16, 2013, in Istanbul

Photo by Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images

On Sunday, June 16, with Istanbul?s Taksim Square in a fog of tear gas five miles away, thousands of supporters of Recep Tayyip Erdo?an gathered on seaside fair grounds to hear their embattled prime minister speak. For nearly three weeks protesters had filled Taksim and the adjacent Gezi Park, chanting "Tayyip, resign." Now police had cleared the square, and it was Erdo?an?s turn to show that not all Turkish citizens wanted him gone.

"Gezi Park and Taksim Square have been returned to the people," Erdo?an shouted, pacing across a large stage. He condemned foreign media, called the protesters terrorists, and reminded the crowd of what he and his party, the AKP, had done for them over the past decade. He addressed his female supporters, many of whom are religiously conservative and cover their heads, warning that the occupiers of Gezi Park were threatening "our sisters in headscarves." This was not a perfunctory aside. For years Turkey had a long-standing partial ban on the headscarf, but under Erdo?an things have changed: Women can now attend university in headscarves, and they are more visible in the workplace and in the streets. The prime minister knows that his religious supporters fear a new regime would reinstate the ban. And so he gives that shoutout to his base, and each headscarf in the crowd is a potent symbol of his bond with them.

At the same time, the Taksim Square protesters were hyping their own covered women. These were women who sat in the park in spite of things that might typically turn them off, like drinking. They were there even though many secularists see the headscarf as a direct challenge to the principles of Mustafa Kemal Atat?rk, Turkey?s first president and an inspiration to the opposition movement (portraits of Atat?rk hung throughout Gezi Park). To the protesters, these women?even in small numbers?represent a shifting tide in Turkey. A headscarf signifies religious devotion, but after 10 years of Erdo?an and more than three weeks of arrogance and police brutality, it may not indicate political affiliation.

In Turkey, the headscarf is a deeply controversial symbol, considered by many, rather superficially, to be evidence of the country's Islamization. For secular women, unveiling was an important part of a package of rights?including suffrage and the outlawing of polygamy?granted to them in the early years of the Turkish Republic. Atat?rk emphasized education for women, and the act of living in public?of unveiling and being seen?was considered an expression of modern, republican ideals.

But the strict secular ideology?some of which was codified after the 1980 military coup, when all opposition, including religious, was violently suppressed?marginalized women who wanted to cover. They viewed it as oppression, not liberation. Turkish anthropologist Esra ?zy?rek spent years interviewing Turkish citizens who were young at the founding of the Republic. One interview with a retired teacher named Vedia, which ?zy?rek writes about in her book Nostalgia for the Modern, shows how abrupt the shift was. "In those days in Izmir, if women went out in veils, young men would grab their veils and rip them off," Vedia said. "Or these women would have to pay a fine of sixty or seventy liras for veiling. After several months, veiling totally disappeared."

These days, a lot of women wear a headscarf in Turkey, including Erdo?an's wife and the wife of President Abdullah G?l. A thriving fashion industry caters to religious women, and they have taken their place among Turkey's growing middle class. They are, in short, integrated into society. But, as the past month has shown, they also still shoulder a great burden to be symbols on one side or the other of a divided nation.

"Most of the Western media, at the beginning, covered this as secular versus religious,? Zeynep Alemdar, a professor of international relations at Okan University who has been active in the protest movement, told me. ?But we have been trying to show that this is not about secularism." A reliable way of doing this is to claim the covered women in the crowd?both identifying them and welcoming them?and Alemdar views it as positive approach. It's certainly time-honored. ?This is not a new phenomenon,? Alemdar said. ?It?s not unique to the Gezi protesters to, let?s say, co-opt these women.?

That some see religious women as symbols (as opposed to, say, individuals, with nuanced views of politics and religion) might be why there were reports of headscarved women being harassed at the protests. During the second week, when the atmosphere of Gezi Park was still pretty upbeat, I met Deniz Bayram, a lawyer and feminist activist, by the Istanbul Feminist Collective tent. Turkish feminists tend to be divided on the headscarf issue?some see it as inherently oppressive while others view it as a matter of choice. Bayram was adamant that the feminist movement there was inclusive. "Women have been in the streets, in front of the TOMA trucks," she said (TOMAs are police trucks with mounted water cannons). Among these, she said, were "many" women in headscarves. To unite religious and secular women, the collective was working on a manifesto, part of which would denounce the harassment of religiously conservative women at the protests.

Erdo?an?s failures on women's rights may just help the opposition bring more of these women into its camp. He brazenly denounces abortion rights, famously suggested that women should populate Turkey by having three children, and has disregarded the high rate of violence against women. "When it comes to violence against women, secular and religious women are together," Alemdar said.

Still, Erdo?an has legitimate claims to being the liberator of covered women?lifting bans and normalizing the scarf?and for this many are reluctant to turn away from him. The day after Erdo?an's rally, I explored ?sk?dar, a conservative neighborhood on Istanbul's Asian side. I met Serife, a religious woman in her 40s who supports Erdo?an and succinctly revealed how the phrase ?women?s rights? means different things to different women. "He's given women a lot of rights. We are more free," she told me.

Nearby, in an upscale coffee shop, four female university students?political science majors?were eating sticky deserts in an end-of-term celebration. Three were covered in varying styles, one in a conservative brown scarf and long black sleeves. As students, access to education was a personal issue. "Now we can go to universities," a student named Kubra said. "Other students don't react to us as strongly." The girls were eager to talk about their political ideas?all were AKP supporters?and their religious beliefs, and just as eager to dispel the notion that their head coverings were concrete indicators of either.

I heard a similar sentiment from a 20-year-old sociology major named Sumeyye. Her grey headscarf was draped loosely around her neck, and a tight black headband kept her hairline out of sight. "My religion isn't political," she told me. "I am mostly an environmentalist." As a covered woman who doesn't fit the mold, she often feels out of place, so has been supporting the opposition from afar. "It sometimes bothers me that [leftists and other environmentalists] see me first as religious and second as environmentalist," she told me. "Most of my friends are like me."

Sumeyye is grateful to Erdo?an for lifting part of the headscarf ban, but she doesn?t support the AKP. "It's a false assumption that women in headscarves vote for the AKP," she told me. As an environmentalist, she objects to the development of Turkey (opposition to development is what started this whole protest movement), and, ironically, she feels that Erdo?an has not made liberating religious women a priority. Women still cannot wear a headscarf in many public buildings. So what does she plan to do about it? "Muslims don't get angry," she said. "We are patient. But now women in headscarves can get an education?and we think more critically." Which means that each side is going to have to start making a more sophisticated pitch.?

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/06/in_turkey_erdogan_and_the_opposition_agree_every_headscarf_counts.html

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Gay marriage support reverberates for Republican senator (Star Tribune)

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Web Inventor Berners-Lee Warns Forces Are ... - Business Insider

REUTERS/Pascal Lauener

Tim Berners-Lee, director of World Wide Web Foundation, attends the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos January 25, 2013.

Companies and governments ?trying to take control of the internet? are undermining the founding principles of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee has warned.

The inventor of the World Wide Web said the internet is facing a ?major? threat from ?people who want to control it on the sly? through ?worrying laws? such as SOPA, the US anti-piracy act, and through the actions of internet giants.

?If you can control [the internet], if you can start tweaking what people say, or intercepting communications, it's very, very powerful...it's the sort of power that if you give it to a corrupt government, you give them the ability to stay in power forever.?

Sir Tim was speaking as it emerged that the US government has been collecting huge amounts of personal information from Google, Facebook, Apple and other internet companies.

There have also been reports that British spies have been gathering intelligence from the internet giants "through a covertly run operation set up by America's top spy agency"

?Unwarranted government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society,? Sir Tim said. ?I call on all web users to demand better legal protection and due process safeguards for the privacy of their online communications, including their right to be informed when someone requests or stores their data.

?Over the last two decades, the web has become an integral part of our lives. A trace of our use of it can reveal very intimate personal things. A store of this information about each person is a huge liability: Whom would you trust to decide when to access it, or even to keep it secure??

Sir Tim added that a ?wake up call? had been delivered when former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak cut off communications services during the uprising that ousted him.

?A lot of people thought the internet was like the air, it just flows. [After this] people asked, 'who could turn off my internet'??

Sir Tim said "companies and governments in different places all over the world trying to take control of the internet in different ways" is a much bigger threat to its development than fears over any one company having an online monopoly.

"If you remember [web browser] Netscape, people thought, oh the web is great but here's a completely controlling web company, what are we going to do? Then one morning they weren't worried about Netscape any more, it was Microsoft. Then suddenly, wait a moment the browser wasn't the issue, it was the search engine. Then, it's wait a moment, it's the social network.

"If you look at it broadly, yes a monopoly slows innovation, reduces competition. That's why it's important this is an open platform. But monopolies come and go all the time."

Sir Tim called for governments to protect the neutrality and independence of the web and compared its democratic importance to the freedom of the press.

He said "organisations that keep the internet running" should be "connected to government but at arms length. That's really important and as years have gone by that's got more and more important. Once you have an open internet, with an open world wide web on top of it, I'm very optimistic".

Sir Tim was speaking in Monte Carlo at the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the Year competition. He likened the determination he needed when developing the web to the single mindedness exhibited by successful entrepreneurs.

?With the web, it was a paradigm shift. It's a well used phrased but it means that afterwards the world is so different, there weren't the words in the old word to describe the new world. People didn't understand clicks and links and web pages ? we didn't have words.

?You just need to stick with it and work with a few people with in a twinkle in their eye because they get it. Some people will respond with excitement ? not everybody, maybe three in three hundred will get it. The web took off because a few people around the world had the twinkle in their eye and said they could understand what it would be like if all the information in the world was [online].?

He added that while about "25pc of the world" now uses the web, "a massive gap" remains. "There are number of languages where there isn't a lot of stuff on the web, and a lot of culture that isn't represented. A lot of countries haven't got the backbone for a good internet-based democracy.

"The change for the world will be massive when we go from only 20pc of the world having it to 80pc of the world. It is going to be a wonderful explosion in culture and participation and I hope that people of different cultures use it to understand each other as a result."

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/berners-lee-forces-are-trying-to-take-control-of-the-internet-2013-6

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Red panda Is missing from the National Zoo

The National Zoo?tweeted this morning?that a Red Panda who goes by Rusty was last seen around 6 p.m. last night, and zoo staff have apparently been searching trees around the zoo since 8 a.m. this morning, without success.?The zoo further?explained that Rusty "could be sick & hiding, or someone could have taken him" in one tweet, and while that last possibility seems grim, later tweets seemed to hope for the best.

Rusty is a relatively new addition to the zoo. The zoo announced that Rusty joined the habitat in a blog post on June 10. He will turn one year old next month, and was brought to the zoo to breed with their red panda named Shama. Their relationship was going well: "On the second day keepers saw the pair sharing space and even spied Shama grooming Rusty?a sign that this duo is doing well already."?

RELATED: In Quake, Zoo Animals React Much More Adorably Than Humans

Because Twitter is just that type of place, a bunch of people thought to make Edward Snowden jokes.

But all joking aside, the zoo's Twitter account cautioned that if you are the person who happens to find Rusty you should just call the zoo rather than approach.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rusty-red-panda-missing-national-zoo-161404696.html

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The Next Affirmative Action?

In this file photo, UC?Berkeley students walk through Sproul Plaza. A 1996 state proposition banned race-based affirmative action from the University of California.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Supreme Court?s ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas won?t end race-based affirmative action. The court made it harder for schools to defend their policies but not impossible. Justice Anthony Kennedy said for the majority, about any court faced with a challenge to a university?s affirmative-action policy, "The reviewing court must ultimately be satisfied that no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity."

Still, this decision could?and should?lead to a smarter kind of affirmative action that is mostly based on class rather than race. Ten states have banned race-based affirmative action, usually by voter initiative. After the bans passed, an initial dip in minority enrollment often followed. But then in most of these states, schools created new programs to promote racial and ethnic diversity indirectly by giving an admissions preference to low-income students, boosting financial aid, and reducing reliance on test scores. I show this in a report I wrote with Halley Potter, A Better Affirmative Action: State Universities that Created Alternatives to Racial Preferences (PDF).

The new affirmative action, based primarily on economic disadvantage, better addresses the glaring inequities students face. As you can see from the chart below, a low-income student scores on average 399 points lower on the SAT than a wealthy student. By contrast, the average SAT difference between African-American and white students of the same socioeconomic status is only 56 points. In other words, the SAT class gap is seven times as large as the SAT race gap.

Source: Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl, ?How Increasing College Access Is Increasing Inequality, and What to Do about It,? in Rewarding Strivers: Helping Low-Income Students Succeed in College, Richard D. Kahlenberg, ed., (New York: Century Foundation Press, 2010), 170, Table 3.7.

If universities wanted to be truly meritocratic in admissions, they would weight socioeconomic status heavily and race lightly. In fact, research shows that selective universities do the opposite.

Source: Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 92, Table 3.5.

Currently, selective schools boost the chances of admission of black and Hispanic students by 28 percentage points. That is, if a white candidate has a 30 percent chance of being admitted based on her record, an African-American or Latino student with the same record has a 58 percent chance. By contrast, low-income students receive no boost whatsoever.

Note: Figures refer to 1995 applicant pool. Adjusted admissions advantage for Bottom income quartile is calculated relative to middle quartiles. Source: William G. Bowen, Martin A. Kurzweil, and Eugene M. Tobin, Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2005), 105, Table 5.1.

Colleges and universities say they care about economic diversity among students. But 74 percent of students at the most selective 146 schools come from the top socioeconomic quarter of the population, while just 3 percent come from the poorest quarter. Put differently, you are 25 times as likely to run into a rich kid as a poor kid on these campuses.

Source: Anthony P. Carnevale and Stephen J. Rose, ?Socioeconomic Status, Race/Ethnicity and Selective College Admissions,? in Richard D. Kahlenberg (ed), America?s Untapped Resource: Low Income Students in Higher Education (The Century Foundation, 2004), p. 106, Table 3.1.

What happens to racial diversity when colleges stop using racial preferences in admissions? The numbers of minority students don?t necessarily drop. After the University of Texas at Austin was barred from considering race by a 1996 court decision, officials started factoring in socioeconomic status. Then the university began admitting students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school class. By 2004, these race-neutral plans, coupled with growing diversity statewide, produced more racial and ethnic diversity at UT?Austin than had been achieved in 1996 using race.

Source: Brief for Petitioner in Abigail Noel Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, et al., http://www.projectonfairrepresentation.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Brief-for-Petitioner-Fisher-v-Univ-of-Texas.pdf

Texas is not alone. In Washington, Florida, Georgia, and Nebraska, where race-based affirmative action ended, new programs to provide a leg up to low-income students, improve outreach to them, and reduce the importance of test scores have boosted the number of black and Latino students at flagship campuses.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/

Among the 10 leading public universities in states that banned racial preferences, three did not fully restore black and Latino representation using economic affirmative action and other race-neutral means. Those schools are UC?Berkeley, UCLA, and the University of Michigan. They are the three most selective schools in the study Halley Potter and I did, and the most likely to draw from a national pool of applicants. That?s important because Berkeley, UCLA, and Michigan were competing for minority students with other universities that could continue to use racial preferences in admission. Given that uneven playing field, it?s not surprising that these three universities have had difficulty in recruitment.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/

Some studies find that income-based affirmative action won?t produce much racial diversity. That?s true in part because, on average, compared with whites of the same income level, black and Latino students face extra obstacles?they are more likely to live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty, and to have less family wealth. UCLA Law School developed a definition of socioeconomic disadvantage that includes family wealth and neighborhood poverty, as well as income. Using those measures, the school admitted far more black and Latino students than it did using the regular admissions standards that didn?t include these factors.

Source: Karman Hsu, director of admissions, UCLA Law School, email to Halley Potter on September 4, 2012.

If schools admit more low-income students, will graduation rates drop (because of poor preparation in K?12)? A simulation of admissions at the most selective 146 universities shows that graduation rates would slightly rise if the proportion of students from the less wealthy half of the population rose increased from 10 percent to 38 percent, using admissions standards based on merit plus class-based affirmative action, and compared with current admissions policies that take into account merit, race, athletic status, and legacy status.

Source: Anthony P. Carnevale and Stephen J. Rose, ?Socioeconomic Status, Race/Ethnicity, and Selective College Admissions,? in America?s Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education, Richard D. Kahlenberg, ed. (New York: Century Foundation Press, 2004), 142, 149.

The Fisher decision could be something of a setback for upper-middle-class minority students, but it should be a boon for low-income students of all races as universities develop a new, and better, form of affirmative action based on class.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/06/fisher_v_university_of_texas_decision_at_the_supreme_court_affimative_action.html

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