WILL SEBERGER/Arizona Daily Wildcat Ranson Kennedy, Black Political Forum leader, talks about affirmative action to a group of people outside of the Administration building yesterday.

As the debate over the role of race in college admissions' processes heated up at the Supreme Court yesterday, about 20 activists rallied in support of affirmative action in front of the Administration building on the UA campus.

Members of the Black Political Forum, along with members of the Young Socialists Club and a handful of other students, formed a circle around the loudspeaker and called for administrators to take more steps to increase diversity on campus.

"Do we just want blacks who can run, or do we want our thinkers," said Ranson Kennedy, a UA alum.

As Molly Oller tanned on the lawn, she listened to the speakers who stood just a few feet away.

While she said they made a good argument, she questioned their focus on race.

"Why not take every factor into consideration, and not just race?" she said.

In the fall of 2002, blacks accounted for about 2.7 percent of UA students, about 13 percent were Hispanics, according to the UA Fact Book.

Although Kennedy spoke about quotas during the rally, he said later that UA needs to take a big step toward improving minority recruitment to attract more African-American students.

Administrators have also acknowledged that they need to take more strides in recruiting minority students, which they have addressed in a diversity action plan released last semester.

The diversity action plan calls for revised marketing strategies and more aggressive recruitment through personal contact in order to attract top minority students.

President Pete Likins has said that he wants to give minorities extra consideration in the admissions process if the regents give the universities more control over who is admitted.

"You need to be in an environment with people who don't look like you," he said. "Managing a diversity of populations is important for us."

But administrators have to wait to see if the Supreme Court decides the University of Michigan can consider race in the admissions process.

"I prefer to see what the Supreme Court decides and then we have to see what we can do within the law to make sure we have a diverse class," said Patti Ota, vice president of executive affairs.

Michigan's undergraduate school awards minority students an extra 20 points out of a possible 150, while other factors such as extracurricular activities are assigned lower point values. The law school tries to ensure a class consists of 10 to 12 percent minority students.

Some have said that this case will be the most important test for affirmative action since Regents of Univ. of California v. Bakke, the landmark case that allows universities to factor an applicant's race into admissions decisions.

Opponents of the University of Michigan's admissions process hope that the Supreme Court will decide to overturn the Bakke ruling. They say that Michigan discriminates against white students by admitting less qualified minority students over more-qualified white students.

The Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments today, but a decision is not expected until early this summer.

For Samuel Brown, a political science senior, the oral arguments he heard on C-Span encouraged him to come out to the rally and show his support for affirmative action policies.

"We're going to fight," he said.

÷ Jeff Sklar contributed to this report