I suppose I'm also a member of that "AA club." I got into Berkeley (then called Boalt) Law School only because of its Affirmative Action admissions program at that time. Not that they had a shortage of white Jewish men. But the way that Affirmative Action was applied there at the time was to look beyond LSATs and grades, and consider where each applicant came from, and what they had done, individually reviewed by a committee which included minority students.
My LSAT scores were good, but not good enough for "Boalt." My undergraduate school (UC Santa Cruz) didn't even have grades. But they looked at my work for the United Farm Workers and the long thesis I wrote about it, rather than just test scores and grades.
This was right after the Bakke decision came out, which was the beginning of the end of these programs. (I found some of the briefs for that case lying around, which had been written by my professors). Once in, I tried to pay-it-forward by being active in the Coalition for a Diversified Faculty. But, because of Bakke, on top of the racism embedded in the the University, our efforts bore little fruit. That story is told in Andrea Guerrero's book - Silence at Boalt Hall: The Dismantling of Affirmative Action (UC Press 2002).
Because of the dismantling of Affirmative Action, I would not be admitted today without the test scores and grades I had then. Minority enrollment has declined. Now, the Supreme Court is set to completely obliterate what little is left of affirmative action.
