Light and Rand, p.3
Introduction
Here at the University of North Dakota (UND), as across the country, affirmative action
is a contentious and controversial issue, even after the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision
upholding the use of race-conscious university admissions policies in Grutter v. Bollinger.
1
Teaching subjects related to race at a school like UND presents particular challenges and sheds
light on the varying practicalities of the Court’s diversity rationale in Grutter. Most UND
students are from North Dakota, a state whose population is over 92% white, and many white
students come to UND with little or no contact with people of color. As a result, few have given
much thought to or see the inherent value of student-body diversity along racial or ethnic lines.
In our Constitutional Law courses (Light’s in the Department of Political Science and
Public Administration; Rand’s at the School of Law), we use affirmative action in university
admissions following Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
2
as a case study of the
interrelationship of constitutional interpretation and public policy implementation. Together, we
have developed an integrated approach, drawing on individual and group activities, PBS’
Frontline documentary Secrets of the SAT and its companion web page,
3
an overview of the
history of affirmative action and university admissions, and, of course, the case law. The
teaching module revolves around a group exercise we have developed to help students begin to
question common assumptions about race and affirmative action through discussion in a
structured, peer-led context.
Our central purposes in this paper are to provide other instructors with the opportunity to
adapt this module for use in their own classrooms, and to discuss how our experiences in using
1
___ U.S. ___, 123 S. Ct. 2325 (2003); see also Gratz v. Bollinger, ___ U.S. ___, 123 S. Ct. 2411 (2003).
2
438 U.S. 265 (1978).
3
See Frontline, Secrets of the SAT (PBS television broadcast, fall 1999) [hereinafter Secrets of the SAT video];
Frontline, Secrets of the SAT, at <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/> (last visited Mar. 10,
2004) [hereinafter Secrets of the SAT web site].
Convention