An upcoming court decision could have implications on how Ohio State and other universities use affirmative action in their admission practices.

Later this month the United States Supreme Court will decide whether to hear Grutter v. Bollinger, a case challenging admission preferences for minorities at the University of Michigan Law School.

The case sparked a national debate over the role of affirmative action in U.S. universities and has not caused graduate professional schools at OSU to alter their original admissions policies.

While the professional graduate schools at OSU do not use minority quotas, they do consider race as a factor in admissions in order to achieve diversity within the classroom.

Lorna Kenyon, associate director of admissions and records for the College of Medicine, said the medical school, like most graduate and professional schools at OSU, follows the previous Supreme Court decision, University of California v. Bakke, in which minority quotas were deemed unconstitutional but the use of one’s race and ethnicity could still be included as a factor in admissions.

“We strive to achieve a good balance of diversity in the entering class,” Kenyon said. “It may take the form of gender, race, ethnicity or unique personal experiences that would add to the richness of the entering class.”

To increase the diversity of their classes, some colleges have turned to recruitment of minorities. The colleges of medicine, law, pharmacy and veterinary medicine all try to recruit strong minority applicants by targeting historically black institutions, but one college is struggling just to get minority students into the profession.

Dr. William Fenner, associate dean of students affairs in the college of Veterinary Medicine, said the challenge is finding qualified minorities interested in becoming veterinarians and then getting them to come to OSU.

Whether the recruitment efforts have been successful depends on the individual schools.

Over the past three years the number of minorities in the law school’s entering class has increased from 37 to 47 out of a total class size of 247 students. The veterinary school has decreased from having five to three minorities out of 136 students in 2002.

Most colleges claim the outcome of Michigan’s case will have little if any effect on their admissions policies.

Kathy Northern, associate dean for academic and student affairs in the Moritz College of Law, said the school’s admissions policies would change only if the courts ruled out using race as an aspect of diversity in admissions.

One possible aspect for OSU resulting from this case could be the types of financial aid offered to minority students.

Marie Taris, director of graduate, international and professional student admissions, said any negative decision against Michigan’s admissions policies could affect financial aid allocation designated for minorities. She said this would make it harder to offer special financial aid to minority students.

Kenyon said there has actually been a decrease in the number of minority applications the medical school has received in recent years, and it may be because of insufficient financial aid.

“A lot of graduate students depend on financial aid, and when it comes to minorities other colleges may be able to offer them more money than we can,” she said.

Each graduate professional school sets its own admissions standards, but each also follows guidelines and values set by OSU as a whole, including the strive for diversity.

Some colleges make it clear that diversity is equally or more important to them as it is to the university community as a whole.

Kenneth Hale, assistant dean of student affairs at the College of Pharmacy, said their school would promote diversity in the student body, even if OSU didn’t.

“Historically it has been a priority for us, we date our first minority student graduate all the way back to 1897,” he said.

While each college claims its admissions policies abide by OSU’s rules and regulations, for colleges to keep their preferential treatment for minorities unknown to the university would not be unheard of.

Taris said her office plays more of an educational role rather than monitoring role in the school’s admissions policies, so a deviation from the norm would not be impossible.

“Some colleges may say, ‘Why don’t we give extra points to African-Americans because we are losing all our minorities to graduation,’ ” Taris said. “It would be a local decision made by the individual college so we would not know about it.”

Curt Levey, from the Center for Individual Rights in Washington, D.C., and representing the plaintiff in the Michigan case, said the goal in Grutter v. Bollinger is to have one uniform law completely ruling out race as a factor in admissions.

“Recent Supreme Court decisions have shown colleges use race as a plus in admissions to remedy the effects of their past discriminations,” Levey said.

While Taris said the university is only making sure the student body is diversified, a situation like Michigan’s is not unthinkable.

“I’m not saying it couldn’t happen here,” she said.