Over the course of the past three decades, the law has played a significant role in determining the admission policies of educational institutions across the nation.

In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court determined in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke that using any kind of rigid quota system to enforce affirmative action violated the 14th amendment. In 2000, Gratz v. Bollinger led to the decision that while race could be used as a factor in admitting students to University of Michigan, the practice of adding points to minority students’ applications could not.

In this case, applicants were judged on a 150-point scale, where any student scoring over 100 was admitted. At the time of the case, being a minority student was worth 20 points and having a perfect SAT score garnered only 12.

Unsurprisingly, the revelation of these policies caused uproar both on the campuses involved and in America as a whole. In the current era, such policies are not only frowned upon but also illegal, forcing admission departments to come up with new methods of generating diversity. Douglas Christiansen, dean of admissions, described Vanderbilt’s policy as holistic, citing a need to consider all facets of a student’s application.

From Christiansen’s view, diversity does not just imply race, but many different factors including socioeconomic status, region, and country of origin and extracurricular participation. Some might be concerned with giving some applicants an unfair advantage, but it all comes down to relativity. The application is judged subjectively, not objectively, to take in account various deviations from the norm or background (like rural community versus urban environment). Furthermore, from the Office of Admissions’ viewpoint, diversity is inherently good.

There is some truth to that. The Office of the Dean of Students claims there are over 300 organizations on campus and with that, there arises a need to provide a student base to support those many varied interests. In other words, if Vanderbilt intends to promote (and brag about) a vibrant campus life, it needs to provide the resources to maintain just such a community.

Of course, creating an active campus community is no substitute for academics — the backbone of a university. To this, Christiansen mentions all applicants accepted are more than qualified to do the work, citing the most recent retention rate for the sophomore class (96.71 percent). More than that, 85.01 percent of the class of 2004 graduated in four years. Controlling for certain demographics, like athletes, paints a similar picture. This implies the student body as a whole is perfectly capable of maintaining a vigorous academic course load and an active social life.

 It’s just with over 19,000 applications this year, Admissions has the ability to be selective about whom it accepts. As Christiansen points out, no one factor is necessarily decisive in an applicant’s acceptance. In other words, racial background does not guarantee acceptance — high GPA, tests scores and extracurricular participation do.

In a traditional sense, Vanderbilt does not practice affirmative action. Current admission policy focuses heavily on finding students with both academic strengths and varied background to create an interesting campus. Does it work? It’s a subjective question that’s difficult to answer on absolute terms. Statistical analysis of the campus does provide some insight, but the data cannot be taken entirely at face value — some interpretation is still required. For better or worse, Vanderbilt Admissions attempts to balance several factors, and with any luck, perhaps it works.

—Thomas Shattuck is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Science.  He can be reached at thomas.w.shattuck@vanderbilt.edu.