William C. Powers Jr., president of the University of Texas at Austin, might have provided grounds for a new U.S. Supreme Court review of his institution's race-conscious undergraduate admissions policy by overseeing a separate, side-door process for considering favored applicants.
The separate admissions process, which the Supreme Court did not know about when it examined Texas' admissions practices two years ago, undermined the "holistic" admissions process that has been the subject of the federal courts' scrutiny, according to a Cato Institute brief urging the Supreme Court to re-examine the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions on the Austin campus. The separate process also provided the university with a second, undisclosed means of giving extra consideration to minority applicants, the brief says.
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/u-of-texas-chief-might-have-exposed-its-admissions-policy-to-new-supreme-court-challenge/95719