Underrepresented: the number of blacks and Latinos in medical schools continues to lag, and efforts to build it are now in jeopardy

Chicago Reporter, The, June, 2004 by Justina Wang

But admissions officials at several medical schools said that increasing the number of black and Latino medical students will be more difficult because of the growing anti-affirmative action sentiment they've witnessed in the past five years.

In 1999, the Center for Equal Opportunity sent Freedom of Information Act requests to several Illinois public universities to scrutinize their admissions procedures.

Clegg said the group has also sent letters warning schools in Illinois that they may face legal action if they do not close their "racially exclusive" programs. He wouldn't reveal which schools received the letters, and officials with each of the major medical schools in the Chicago area said they had not received them.

At least 10 universities across the country, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University, closed down their minority programs after receiving threats of lawsuits from the Center for Equal Opportunity and the American Civil Rights Institute. The Center for Equal Opportunity is headed by Linda Chavez, a conservative Mexican American political analyst once nominated for U.S. Secretary of Labor. The American Civil Rights Institute is led by Ward Connerly, an African American member of the University of California Board of Regents who led the initiative to end race-based admissions policies in that state's university system.

The groups have issued several studies of university admissions procedures and minority programs that spurred lawsuits against schools nationwide, including the well-publicized case against the law school at the University of Michigan. In 2002, a group of white students filed a class-action suit challenging the admissions policy at the law school, which was based on a point system that evaluated candidates on several factors, including race. The case gained nationwide attention, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that the point-based plan was unconstitutional.

At the same time, in a separate 5-4 vote, the court ruled in favor of Michigan's undergraduate admissions process, allowing race to be considered as part of an application as long as no racial quotas were set.

Medical school admissions for the class entering in the fall of 2003 were made in the wake of the University of Michigan decisions--and officials working with Chicago-area medical schools were paying attention.

The decisions sparked conversations that prompted the Association of American Medical Colleges to change the name of the "Minority Medical Education Program" to the "Summer Medical Education Program." The program is a six-week session held every summer at 11 sites across the country, including a joint session in Chicago for students from the University of Chicago, Northwestern and Rush.

More than 12,000 students have participated in the program since it started in 1989-when it was open exclusively to underrepresented minorities. In 1997, the program was opened to all students but remained focused on the needs of underrepresented minority students and the health issues of some minority groups.