Minority leaders question admissions proposal

Jennifer Knight

Friday, Nov. 16, 2001 | 9:39 a.m.

Raise admission standards and shut the university door on minorities. Maintain the status quo and admit unprepared students, who will ultimately fail.

A proposal by the Board of Regents to raise university admissions standards had minority leaders and university educators arguing both points during a public forum arranged by Regent Linda Howard at the West Las Vegas Arts Center on Thursday.

The forum was the first of two informational sessions designed to give regents public input before voting to raise the minimum grade point average for admissions from 2.5 to a 3.0. So far, three such proposals over the past decade have failed to gain approval.

If minority advocates have their way, regents Dec. 6 and 7 will vote the proposal down for the fourth time.

"They want you to believe this proposal is not elitist, yet they say they want to increase their reputation by attracting the best and the brightest students," said Thomas Rodriguez, a panelist and consultant with the Reynaldo L. Martinez Institute for Leadership and Research.

"What this means is that they want to send you to a community college until you smarten up, then maybe you can join the elite."

Rainier Spencer, University of Nevada, Las Vegas' associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts, doesn't agree.

"Currently the GPA is 2.5," Spencer said. "If you're so against elitism, then why have a 2.5 requirement? How is a 3.0 more elitist than a 2.5?"

According to information recently released by UNLV, of the minority students who applied for admission in 2000, 44 percent would not make the cut under the new standards.

Since then, the black community has organized against the proposal, and Southern Nevada regents have begun to follow suit. Regents Steve Sisolak, Tom Kirkpatrick and Thalia Dondero said they are opposed to the proposal.

Black leaders such as Las Vegas City Councilman Lawrence Weekly, Assemblyman Wendell Williams, D-North Las Vegas, and former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People leader Gene Collins attended the meeting to voice their concerns over the potential effects of the proposal on low-income families.

Brandon Leigh, 20 and Kaybee McClarine, 22, are students at the Community College of Southern Nevada. Both grew up in single parent households, where money was tight and preparing for college took a back seat to other concerns.

"I was busy being the man of the family," McClarine said. "You start thinking about the fact that, 'I've gotta get a job. I need new gym shoes, I'm getting taller.' You don't have time to think about GPA."

"When kids go to high school, they aren't thinking about college until their junior year," Leigh said. "By that time, their GPA is already messed up."

Williams said he believes there should be alternative admission standards.

"Other states require a series of factors before admitting a student into college," Williams said.

Although several of the forum's eight panelists said a student's high school GPA is not necessarily an adequate indicator of college success, Shannon Ellis, vice president for student services at University of Nevada, Reno, cited statistics to the contrary.

Of those who achieved a 3.0 and above in 1998, 69 percent remained in school two years later, while 47 percent of students with a "B" average or lower dropped out.

Ellis said that she is seeing a trend in which students at UNR are being admitted under the 2.5 GPA and, two years later, are having problems getting into the majors of their choice because most colleges have higher admission requirements.

But in the end, Rainier said, it's the university that must deal with students who are not prepared to do university work.

"You have all these people saying let them in, let them in and then they go home," Spencer said. "You may call for students to be let in, but I'm the one who has to deal with them, and I can't undo years of students who are underprepared."