Seniors Kiran Herz and Jaiden Hwang wrote state legislation that would allow top students from districts around Colorado to be guaranteed admission to state universities.

The bill, known as Initiative 81, aims to make the college application process a bit easier for those applying.

“We’re trying to edit Colorado Revised Statutes to essentially make college applications a little less stressful for state schools, at least,” Hwang said. “The top 10% of each high school student body by GPA would get automatic admission to in-state higher education institutions.”

These structures, installed in the legislation, allow the breadth of Initiative 81 to vary depending on the school as well as other factors, such as funding and teacher quality.

“The bar for Eaglecrest is going to be a little bit different for Smoky Hill than for Denver East than for Cherry Creek High School,” Herz said. “It also accounts for differences in ethnic groups, differences in qualities of teachers and different class types. All schools have different systems for weighing GPAs.”

The catalyst for Herz and Hwang’s work on Initiative 81 came through viewing firsthand the hectic atmosphere brought on by Creek’s upperclassmen as they applied for higher education.

“For all my years of high school, I’ve seen seniors incredibly stressed about the college admissions process, and it [reflected] a high level of uncertainty,” Herz said. “It caused people to withdraw into themselves on a futile quest to get the perfect college essay, the perfect extracurriculars and everything necessary to get into college.”

While Initiative 81 was designed specifically for Colorado, other jurisdictions have implemented similar policies.

“We’re not the first state to try and implement this. There’s something similar in several other states,” Hwang said. “The primary one was from California, and we modeled ours after the [legislation] in Texas.”

The concept of automatic admission also isn’t new in Colorado. Individual school districts have implemented similar policies directed at local universities.

Jefferson County public schools guarantees admission to the School of Mines for students who maintain an unweighted 3.8 cumulative gpa through the Nov 1 priority deadline and have all the other admission requirements. 

If passed, Herz and Hwang hope that Initiative 81 might serve as a greater motivation for improved academics.

“It can be viewed as an academic incentive,” Hwang said. “It can say ‘this is where I need to be if I want to go to Boulder or Mines.’”

While the benefits of Initiative 81’s implementation are heartfelt in its advocates, some identify a few potential unintended consequences of the bill.

“If a law like this is passed, you potentially are going to create a scramble to finish in the top 10% of your class,” social studies teacher Fletcher Woolsey said. “This could lead to all manner of different ways that people might try to game or cheat that system.”

Woolsey still sees the benefits of such a measure. 

“It is very admirable that they want their state’s public universities to admit the best students from that state,” Woolsey said. “We’d have to be cautious as to what kind of ripple effect is going to be. Maybe most kids are just going to go about their daily life the same, but it could also have some unintended side effects.”

Initiative 81 has been on the radar of state officials, however that still doesn’t guarantee the initiative’s accession into the state House or Senate.

“We are in contact with state legislators, and we’re trying to get a volunteer base to pass it through the initiative pathway,” Herz said. “If that doesn’t work out, we need to fall back on the citizen-led pathway.”

The citizen-led pathway entails a fallback on grassroots organizing on behalf of the legislation, rather than a legislative route to ensure the initiative’s success.

“Ideally we would be able to get back in from someone, either from the Colorado house or Colorado Senate, but that hasn’t happened yet,” Hwang said.

For now, Initiative 81 is very reliant on volunteers in order to spread awareness of its cause. 

“If you are a teen and want to volunteer, please let us know,” Herz said. “We have a website, [initiative81.org] we have a volunteer form set up for you, and we have the resources ready.”