Bakkes v California Board of Regents

 

In the case of Bakke v Regents of the University of California, Allan Bakke, who was a white male, was rejected twice from the University of California’s Davis School of Medicine. Bakke’s grounds for presenting the case was that the University’s admissions programs violated certain protections he was entitled to under the 14^th amendment as well as some protections guaranteed in the civil rights act. The university’s admissions departed had two separate admissions processes: one for
regular applicants and another one for minority and disadvantaged students. Sixteen spots in the school’s class of 100 were supposedly set aside for applicants specifically in the special admissions program. Allan Bakke applied to the school twice, rejected both times.

Bakke was a National Merrit Scholar at Coral Gables Senior High School in Coral Gables, Florida. He then was admitted into and attended the University of Minnesota for his undergraduate education. He joined the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps. He soon after graduated from the University of Minnesota with a 3.51 GPA and then joined the Marine Corps and served for four years, which included a stint in Vietnam where he was commanding officer of an anti-aircraft battery and then appointed the rank of captain, as to go above and beyond fulfilling his ROTC requirements. After what some would describe as an already illustrious career, Bakke then went on to find employment as an engineer at NASA. Now, despite all of this, TWELVE medical schools rejected his application for admission. Bakkes application to UC Davis was late and part of what was called “rolling admission” due to his

mother being ill amongst what could’ve been a litany of reasons. This meant that a lot of seats were already taken up and there were only, but a few seats left in the incoming class. The court’s transcripts reveal that Bakkes addressed his anxieties around his age in his application which he deferred to his ears of sacrifice for the country. Bakke received 468 out of 500 possible points on the admissions committee’s rating scale. In that scale, earlier in the year, a rating of at least 470 would have granted Bakke automatic admission into the school. Bakke scored in the 97^th percentile in scientific knowledge, 96^th percentile in verbal ability, as well as scoring in the 94^th percentile in quantitative analysis. Bakke also scored a 72 on his MCAT (the average regular DAVIS applicant scored a 69 and the average for the special program was a 33). In fact, Mr. Bakkes even took a visit to UC Davis and met with a man by the name of Dr. Theodore West who worked there; Dr. West went on to describe Bakke as, “a well-qualified candidate for admission whose main hardship is the unavoidable fact that he is now 33…” What I’m getting at here is that Bakkes was more than just a well-qualified applicant, he was as qualified as any human being could possibly even hope to be. About two months after his visit, Bakkes received his letter of rejection. 

Bakke was then advised that he could maybe take legal action against the school, which he then did. The case took its time going through different ranks of court, as a case of this magnitude usually does. While there was much drama between the justices, one even being absent for a period to a prostate surgery, the court eventually

ruled on a compromise much like how Professor Smith did in our class. The court struck down the minority admissions program and henceforth, admitted Bakke. However, they did find affirmative action permissible under “some circumstances”. The court also decided to strike the decision made earlier by the California Supreme Court which forbade the university to consider race in the admissions process, a decision which has just been overturned again in a subsequent case.

I believe that my personal opinion on the ruling and potential ruling of this case lies in the very profound and powerful words of Justice and civil rights legend Thurgood Marshall. “I repeat, for next to the last time: the decision in this case depends on whether you consider the action of the Regents as admitting certain students or as excluding certain other students. If you view the program as admitting qualified students who, because of this Nation's sorry history of racial discrimination, have academic records that prevent them from effectively competing for medical school, then this is affirmative action to remove the vestiges of slavery and state imposed segregation by "root and branch." If you view the program as excluding students, it is a program of "quotas" which violates the principle that the "Constitution is color-blind." If only the principle of color-blindness had been accepted by the majority in Plessy in 1896, we would not be faced with this problem in 1978. We must remember, however, that this principle appeared only in the dissent. In the 60 years from Plessy to Brown, ours was a Nation where, by law, individuals could be given "special" treatment based on race.”