Race bill may see floor vote this year

Kayla Webley
2005-03-03
The Daily

A bill to allow college admission boards to consider race as a factor in admissions successfully made it out of committee yesterday and may be scheduled for a floor vote during the remainder of the legislative session.

Senate Bill 5575 would amend Initiative 200, which, since it passed in 1998, has made it illegal for colleges to use race in admissions.

"We're obviously very pleased that this bill appears to be moving forward," said UW student lobbyist Jamie Corning. "We're optimistic that the Legislature will finally begin to address the problem of I-200."

The bill made headlines recently when UW President Mark Emmert wrote a guest column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer advocating amending I-200.

"Removing the restrictions of I-200 would give us an additional tool: the ability, once more, to consider race and ethnicity in shaping our ... student bodies," Emmert wrote in the column. "We won't know until we try it whether this tool, under these conditions, can in fact improve the diversity of our student body. But we would like the chance to find out."

UW lobbyists and administrators testified last month to ensure the bill's successful passage out of education committees in both chambers.

The legislation had until 5 p.m. to be moved from the executive session in the Senate's Higher Education Committee to the Rules Committee. Had the bill not been moved, it would have been postponed indefinitely, or until a legislator chose to resurrect it during a future legislative session.

The Senate bill's companion, House Bill 1586, died in committee after it failed to meet yesterday's deadline.

"As long as the Senate bill is still alive [legislators] can vote it out of senate where it can then be scheduled for a vote in the House," said Corning. "Since one of the two bills made it out of committee, the issue's still very much alive."