9/26/00 4:25 p.m.
Terrapin Preferences
Maryland is the latest state exposed for racial discrimination in college admissions.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

y now everybody knows that the admissions offices at colleges and universities routinely use racial preferences to boost black enrollment. The Center for Equal Opportunity keeps doing yeoman's work on this issue, churning out hard numbers to make the case. Tomorrow it will release its latest study, this time on public institutions of higher education in Maryland.

The findings: "The evidence is very strong that several Maryland schools use racial and ethnic admissions preferences," says CEO president Linda Chavez. At the University of Maryland's flagship campus, in College Park, the median white enrollee has a composite SAT score of 1220, compared to 1050 for the median black enrollee. At St. Mary's College, the gap is 245 points: 1280 for whites, 1035 for blacks.

CEO has previously documented the use of racial preferences in California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington state, and at the Army and Navy service academies.

Out with the New
Last Friday, we mentioned that Economic Security 2000, a group that favors an investment-based reform of Social Security, had issued a report card that gave George W. Bush's plan much higher grades than Al Gore's. The report card has caused Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey, a Democrat, to resign as the group's co-chair. He says it was "oversimplified" and issued too close to the election. (Comparisons of presidential candidates' plans should, presumably, be released when nobody is paying attention.) Maybe there should be a new Olympic event: Kerrey is hot on Joe Lieberman's heels, doing a 100-meter dash away from their principles.

On the Site
Read John J. Miller on the fate of Kennewick Man.