SB 185 vetoed

Unobtrusively located at the bottom of page 3A of the Sunday E-R was a short article about the governor's important veto of the bill [SB 185] that would have allowed public state universities to consider race in their admission policies.

When I finish this sentence, this letter about that crucial decision will be longer than that news release. Hopefully, when I finish here, no copy editor will do what was done to the cited article which, at the end, sported the incompletion, "the courts should decide the" (One more line, please.)

This veto is important because college entrance must be based solely upon the student's GPA, his/her SAT or ACT score and, as has become popular of late, his/her contributions to social service. Parenthetically, it could also be proper to accept the recommendations of the educators most closely associated with those applicants whose qualifications are similar and difficult to differentiate. The governor has recognized that the state, being a fair and constitutional body, can embrace no other policy.