Michigan medical schools pursue diversity without preferences

School officials say the prohibition will not diminish minority recruitment efforts.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. Feb. 5, 2007.

Michigan medical school leaders are concerned that they will end up with fewer minority students after voters passed an affirmative action ban in November 2006.

"Students have the perception that a hostile atmosphere is being created," said Silas Norman Jr., MD, assistant dean for admissions at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. "If they get multiple acceptances, we don't know if they'll choose us."

Michigan joined California and Washington as states in which voter initiatives ended the use of racial and gender preferences in state employment, education and contracting. Florida has a similar ban made law by a governor's order.

Michigan's ballot initiative followed a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the use of race as one of several admissions criteria at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor. The decision allowed the university to consider applicants' race, and it prompted schools in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to consider race in admissions after a decade-old 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision out of New Orleans had prohibited them from using race-conscious admissions.

Representatives from Michigan's four medical schools said they hoped to maintain racial diversity as they remove racial preferences from admissions. Steven Gay, MD, interim assistant dean of admissions for the University of Michigan Medical School, said he was optimistic that they would maintain racial diversity, since it was one of several factors considered.