Subject: Re: Shameful Policy
"No university or agency in the A&M system will admit any student, nor hire any employee based on any factor other than merit",/i>

That's not a great policy.

Just one example: There are people who score off the charts on tests but have the humanity of rocks. They make lousy physicians.

My Dad was a UCLA physician/professor. When affirmative action was instituted he was, initially, bothered that some medical students weren't as mathematically capable as others. He felt 'put upon' that he had to take time to explain what, to him, was remedial material.
Eventually he came to realize that, while they might not become top flight researchers (his passion was nuclear metabolism), they make fine, empathetic diagnosticians...and god knows we need a few tens of thousands more of those right now in many many underserved communities.