The U.S Supreme Court handed down split decisions on two issues dealing with affirmative action Monday.

John McCarroll, director of university relations, said Iowa State will not be substantially affected by the Supreme Court’s decision and this ruling appears to be consistent with past Supreme Court rulings.

“We don’t think there is any major impact that will come out of this,” McCarroll said.

The University of Michigan was brought to court after two women, Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter, were rejected from the Michigan undergraduate and law school respectively.

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor provided the swing vote in the 5—4 decision to maintain the law school program admissions policy which regards race as a factor, but doesn’t consider it an important part of the entrance process.

However, the Supreme Court voted against admissions policies at Michigan’s undergraduate school 6—3, stating the point system used for entrance was unconstitutional.

According to University of Michigan’s Web site, www.umich.edu, a total of 150 points can be awarded, but only 100 points are needed for guaranteed acceptance. The category that awards the most points is grade point average. Eighty points is given for a 4.0 GPA, while a 3.0 GPA still earns 60 points.

All minority students, both privileged and underprivileged, are automatically given 20 points, “solely because of their skin color,” according to the university Web site.

Between a minority applicant and a white or Asian applicant, a non-underrepresented minority, who both attended the it’s been reduced by almost $60 million [since 2000—01],” Geoffroy said.

The remainder of the $104.6 million shortfall consists of $14 million in the underfunding of salary increases and an increase of over $32 million in unavoidable costs, he said. The 2002—03 academic year’s unavoidable costs include student financial aid, campus safety and Memorial Union operations.

“[The state appropriations have] been going down at a time when our enrollment have been increasing,” Geoffroy said. “Compared to 2001, we now have 17 percent less state appropriation per student in [Fiscal Year 2004] than we did back in 2001, even though costs are increasing.”

Geoffroy also discussed the recent increase in the faculty per student ratio, which has risen from 15.9 in 1995 to 19.5 students per faculty in 2002.

“We sincerely hope this is maximized,” he said. “We are doing everything we can to control our faculty numbers so hopefully we can get this turned back around.”

Geoffroy also cited the recent rise in the number of large classes taught at Iowa State.

“Basically this is because we had more students and fewer faculty to teach them and that resulted in larger classes,” he said.

The ISU faculty salary, which has been dropping farther below the average, ranks second to last place among peer institutions, Geoffroy said.

“This is very disturbing because it indicates how difficult it is to compete against these peer institutions for the quality faculty that we really need to have at Iowa State,” Geoffroy said.

Regent John Forsyth commended the university for their efforts in reducing overhead to balance the budget.

Warren Madden, vice president for business and finance, said he is not aware of any changes made to the preliminary budget before it is submitted to the Board for final approval next month.

“We think the preliminary budget is very accurate,” Madden said. “The major [changes] are now happening to the departments and units and when that gets done we will know the final numbers.”

The Board approved a motion to refine the criteria for approving major construction projects.

Forsyth said he would like to see a system of prioritization of planned projects in order to give the Board a sense of what future budgets hold.

“If it’s a major project, we would just like to know about it sooner,” Forsyth said.

Geoffroy explained the difficulty behind this proposed system.

“At any given time, we can have five to 10 projects that we are [working on the plans for], none of which will start construction for a couple years,” Geoffroy said. “It is really the challenge of juggling a large number of projects over a period of time.”

Many of the projects the university creates plans for may never even be built, Geoffroy said.

“We need all of that advance time to do the planning process and do it effectively,” Geoffroy said.

The Board also approved the demolition of the existing LeBaron Hall auditorium, the design for its new auditorium and the demolition of the English Office Building.

Demolition for LeBaron Hall auditorium is planned for the summer of 2004 and the new auditorium is planned to be finished by fall of 2005, said Kevin Brown, communication specialist for the ISU news service.