ATHENS — University of Georgia President Michael Adams said Thursday that the school would take steps in the coming year to increase African-American freshman enrollment, even as critics warned that the university will be sued if it uses race as a criterion for admission.

Adams declined to comment on a faculty committee recommendation that the school return to a race-conscious policy in freshman admissions. But he said the state's flagship university has fallen short of its goals in diversifying the student body.

"I do think we've got to continue to be more aggressive about minority recruitment," Adams said. "I am very concerned, almost distressed, by the freshman numbers this year and particularly the plight of African-American males in this state."

Only 200 of the 4,500 freshmen enrolled at UGA this fall are black. Black students make up 5.3 percent of the total student population.

A faculty committee has recommended adding diversity criteria, including race and ethnicity, to the school's admissions policy as soon as next year. In recommending the policy change, the committee said other efforts to achieve a critical mass of diversity on campus have failed. The recommendation is being reviewed by lawyers.

Adams cautioned that the recommendation is not final. University officials will decide by late January whether to implement the diversity criteria in time to review applications for the fall 2005 freshman class, he said.

Critics of the proposed policy warned Thursday that the university will be sued if it attempts to use race in admissions decisions. The Atlanta-based Southeastern Legal Foundation issued a statement warning that the faculty committee's recommendation "creates a grave constitutional risk for a school administration that has been told not to do it by a federal appeals court."

UGA abandoned its previous race-conscious policy in 2001 after a federal judge ruled the practice unconstitutional. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that schools may use race as a factor in admissions as long as it is not the sole criterion.

UGA's freshman admissions policy already uses nonacademic criteria to determine whether some applicants are admitted, including their creativity, community involvement and integrity. The committee's recommendation would add diversity factors: an applicant's race or ethnicity, where the applicant is from, whether he or she speaks a foreign language or has familiarity with a foreign country, and whether he or she possesses a talent that would benefit the university.

The faculty committee also has suggested ways the university can increase African-American enrollment. They include creating an office of diversity recruitment that would draft a specific recruitment plan for minority students; hiring an image consultant to address the school's negative reputation among African-Americans; and identifying money for need-based scholarships. In a recent survey, black high school students in Georgia said the lack of financial aid at UGA, compared with other schools, was a factor in their college decision.

"Clearly we are still suffering some from the days when we were not as welcoming as we are now," Adams said. "We've probably been remiss in not doing a better job on need-based aid. A land grant [university] by definition is a people's institution."

UGA student Cheryl Spaulding, 20, said she believes the school needs to become more culturally as well as racially diverse. Spaulding, of Atlanta, spent her fall break at Howard University in Washington and was impressed with how different each student's background was.

"They are a historically black college, and they are way more diverse than we are," she said.