Education

Professor Compiles Ranking Of ‘The Whitest Law Schools’ And Recommends Eliminating ‘Excess Whiteness’ By Ending Standardized Testing 

(Photo by ULISES RUIZ/AFP via Getty Images)

Marlo Safi Culture Reporter
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A professor emeritus at the University of Dayton compiled a report ranking law schools by the percentage of white first-year students, and encouraged schools to eliminate “excess whiteness” by ending the use of standardized tests in admissions, an uploaded presentation showed.

Professor Emeritus Vernellia R. Randall presented the report titled “ 2021 The Whitest Law School Report” during a virtual event on March 4. The report examined how “white” law schools are, and how much “excess whiteness” needed to be trimmed in order for schools to be racially representative, according to a video of the event, uploaded to Randall’s site, entitled racism.org.

Christopher Rufo, a director at the Discovery Institute, shared slides from the presentation on Twitter.

“In the last 17 years, only a small number of law schools (10) did not increase in Total Whiteness,” one of the slides in the virtual presentation said. “If we have schools that can get to zero excess whiteness then the question for the rest of those are, why can’t you?” Randall said in the video.

The report looks at white first-year enrollment among students, and does not include white faculty or staff.

While showing a list of schools that Randall determined had reached “no excess whiteness,” she said the findings were “encouraging to me.”

“Twenty-two out of 200 schools had no excess whiteness speaks to the issue that this is not an unreasonable expectation,” she said.

Randall showed a list of law schools ranked by the amount of “whiteness points” they increased or decreased by. Thomas Jefferson School of Law is at the top of the list of decreased whiteness, with -41 points. The University of District of Columbia increased in whiteness by 15.5 points. In the past 15 years, 94% of law schools decreased their “total whiteness.”

But even if a school does not have “excess whiteness,” it doesn’t mean the school is sufficiently diverse. 

“But the lack of excess whiteness does not mean the school is diverse in its racial representation,” Randall wrote on the site. “This report does not answer the question of whether Black Americans, Native Americans, Latinx Americans, Asian Americans or Pacific Island Americans are equitably represented.”

Schools can reduce “excess whiteness” by eliminating standardized tests, Randall proposes in the presentation. Schools need to “set specific goals and deadline for elimination excess whiteness.” Most law schools in the U.S. require prospective students take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) in order to apply.

“I think we need to stop using standardized tests in the admissions process,” Randall said in the presentation. “I think that there may be a valid reason to use the standardized testing in helping to plan an effective program for a particular student, but I think the admissions process is where it should not be used.”

Randall then says she is aware her LSAT scores were not sufficient for the schools she applied to, although she had multiple masters degrees and years of experience in education.

“I am cognizant of the fact that I could not get admitted to most schools I applied for,” she said.

Randall did not respond to a request for comment.

“Vernellia Randall is a retired faculty member of the University and created this work as a private citizen,” the University of Dayton told the Daily Caller in response to a request for comment. 

Numerous schools have pushed to eliminate standardized testing or merit-based admissions after claims that tests have a racial and wealth bias that preclude students of certain economic and ethnic backgrounds who have lower scores on average. A February 2020 report from the University of California (UC) Academic Senate recommended loosening the SAT and ACT requirements in order to “address diversity and compensate for inequality.”

In May, UC’s board of regents voted to phase out standardized testing requirements in college admissions and replace SAT and ACT scores with a new application for UC schools by 2025. (RELATED: University Of California Drops SAT And ACT Requirements, Claims Tests Are Discriminatory)

One of the nation’s most prestigious public schools, located in San Francisco, will no longer require test scores and grades for admissions due to “pervasive systemic racism” cited by board members. Similarly, at Boston Public Schools, district officials suspended an advanced program because there were too many white and Asian students in it.