Molly Ivins July 4

AUSTIN — My, my, my. What. A. Mess. The Supreme Court's non-decision (it decided not to decide) in the Hopwood case leaves our ox in the ditch. Texas, along with Louisiana and Mississippi, is now stuck under the 5th Circuit's decision, which was based on an affirmative action program at the University of Texas Law School that no longer exists. As a result, no Texas school that receives federal funds is now permitted to make race a determining factor in admissions or scholarships on pain of heavy fines.

Even though the Supremes indicated in their non-decision that UT's current system of considering race as just one of many factors in the admissions process is constitutional, that's about as useful as a milk pail under a bull. We're still under the 5th Circuit's ruling that makes it illegal. Private universities like Rice are apparently bound as well. Scholarship money donated to schools in good faith for the education of black and brown kids will apparently have to go into a general scholarship fund despite the wishes of those who gave it in the first place.

I suppose we could take all reference to race off applications, but if three applicants are named Gifford Harvey "Chip" Wingate III, Taneeta Chiffon Washington and Jesus Carlos Gonzalez, gee, we'd never be able to guess.

UT President Robert Berdahl points out that we're going to lose the best and brightest minority students to out-of-state schools where affirmative action and minority scholarships will still be available. Berdahl believes that UT — with 2,000 black students and 6,000 Hispanics — is close to "critical mass," the point at which minority students no longer feel isolated or uncomfortable. To lose that advantage throws us back to the days when even super-qualified black kids wouldn't go to UT because it was perceived as "too white."

The Supremes really decided to tear up the pea patch there in the last days of their term. I suspect that if one actually sits down and reads the fine points in their decision to award what looks to be about $20 billion to some savings and loan owners, justice has actually been served. But I refuse to give up my prejudice: Banks and insurance companies are like beehives — they should be robbed twice a year.

The Supremes' redistricting decision will create as much havoc in Texas politics as the Hopwood non-decision does in education.

In our case, the Supremes were laboring under a misapprehension: Our new minority districts were not drawn to create new minority districts; they were drawn to protect incumbent congresspersons. Hey, we're talking values here, and we know what our Legislature considers important.

So now there are three options: Gov. Shrub can call a special session of the Lege (aaarrrgh) and let them redraw the lines (aaarrghh); or the three federal judges in Houston who caught the original case, all of whom happen to be Phil Gramm appointees, can draw new lines (aaarrrrgh); or the state can try to reach a deal with the plaintiffs in the case, a group of unhappy white folks who have already won and have no reason to compromise (aarrrgh). Nothing but fun no matter which way we look. No good ever came of redistricting in the summertime.

The Supremes are taking a lot of flak for telling the Virginia Military Institute that it has to desegregate or go private — a matter comically reminiscent of all the hoorah and prophecies of doom that accompanied Texas A&M's decision to admit women. Lo and behold, Maggies came, they integrated, and A&M remains A&M.

As proof of that, I offer this summer's A&M flapette. There is grave controversy in Aggieland about whether to have a humanities research center on campus. You might think that any university would be happy to have a fine humanities facility, but you have reckoned without our Ags. They are under the impression that humanities research brings about painful rewriting of history — like they'll have to learn that George Washington owned slaves and stuff like that. Humanities, for pity's sake — for all we know, this could result in multiculturalism, political correctness and a wider worldview. Oh, the horror of it all.

Oddly enough, for all the stink over the VMI decision, I cannot recall any similar noise when the Supremes decided to integrate, sexually speaking, the Mississippi state nursing school for women in 1982. No protests ensued; people did not march around claiming that only women make good nurses or that only women could endure the rigors of bedpan training. When our own Texas Woman's University at Denton desegged its programs and allowed guys in, the place did not fall into ruin, and in fact, it continues to function effectively to this good day.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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