Affirmative Action Supreme Court Ruling
What impact will it have on the BIPOC community? How will Holy Cross and other institutions respond?
We had two featured speakers to answer questions and discuss this timely and important issue.
Can you share anything about your background that you think is helpful for us to know and to help us understand what impact might this ruling have on your current role?
SB:
Shared he that carries his experience as a first-generation college student with him in his work.
As was the case in states that have enacted state-level laws that bar the use of consideration of race in admissions (i.e., MI, CA), we expect to see lower enrollment in terms of students of color.
Prompting the following questions:
What does this mean in terms of current students and their sense of belonging in an environment where that might come under attack (e.g. chatter, hate mail, suggesting “you don’t belong here,” “you should never have been admitted”)
What might it mean for students who are still in their formative years in terms of their confidence, sense of belonging, safety?
How can we best support our current students and their sense of belonging and how can we better recruit students and make them feel more at home?
CL:
Shared that he appreciates being a part of an institution that cares deeply and wants to do better in terms of diversity. Many faculty, staff and alumni have reached out in support of this mission.
Race will now be suppressed in the application review process, but it is important to note that race was never the only factor. It has always been one of many factors in a holistic review process. Race-conscious admissions has never allowed for admitting students that were not academically qualified.
The college remains deeply committed to recruiting a student body that is representative of the world in which we live.
What impact might this ruling have on higher education admissions in general, at Holy Cross and beyond?
CL:
(As SB indicated) TX, CA, MI all saw drops in diverse populations in both applications and enrollment following rulings in those states. Data does not suggest that we will see positive outcomes in terms of diversity as a result of this ruling
This decision impacts selective schools like Holy Cross.
Referenced Prop 209 (1996) and UC Berkeley– just this year finally got back in range of pre-Prop 209 in terms of enrollment of African American students
Data is not on our side, but we will continue to do all we can to enroll a diverse class
One positive is that we have an opportunity to reimagine the admissions process and what metrics we utilize to identify talent
Example – Cal Tech recently dropped Physics, Calc, and Chem requirements because some under-resourced schools don’t offer those classes. They offer an alternative of achieving a 90% or above on a certification test through Kahn Academy.
Another positive is that certain people can no longer use race as the reason for why their student wasn’t admitted to an institution
SB:
In the SCOTUS ruling, there are still narrow situations in which students can present their race for consideration.
“Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race effected his/her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise…a benefit to a student who overcame discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination.”
Will be interesting to see what that means for college essays.
Will they become a laundry list of hardships?
Will being 1st Gen now be framed as a hardship, as opposed to a positive
Likely to see more efforts to target HBCUs, more outreach to partner with undergraduate law associations that are race-based
From your personal perspective, what are your takeaways following this decision?
SB:
Recognized this decision as a vast departure from recent precedent. Harvard and UNC had been very careful about relying on the precedent in Grutter v Bollinger (2003), where the Court said you can use race as one of many factors, in a narrowly tailored context through a holistic review that looks at people individually
The recent shift in court’s make-up ideologically was an opportunity for those who wanted to end affirmative action
Interesting that Justice Roberts cited that the admissions programs at Harvard and UNC “lacked measurable objectives.”
The decision was brought by a plaintiff that said that this practice resulted in discriminatory impact on Asian American applicants, so Justice Roberts said you can’t have use of race benefit one group and (in his eyes) work to the detriment of another group
On the flip side, we can look at American History and our long, tortured story of race in America and understand that so much of the inequality that we have is due to that – one of the areas it shows up most is education.
How or what will HC do to proactively respond to this decision?
CL:
In order to increase diversity, you need additional resources.
HC was not surprised by this decision and had already made efforts by casting a wider net in terms of more diverse prospecting inquiries.
HC continues to increase the number of partnerships with Community Based Organizations (CBOs), by 3-5 CBOs per year. These organizations are made up of high academic, low income students from diverse backgrounds.
HC enrolled 12 fantastic, diverse students from QuestBridge (national CBO) this year, with a goal of enrolling 40-50 QuestBridge students next year
HC is providing automatic application fee waivers to 26 under-resourced cities in Massachusetts, as well as Boston, Hartford and Providence.
HC has two people in positions of DEI leadership, and the efforts toward this goal continue to be office wide and community wide
HC initiated a student context pilot program to identify activities that prospective students might not typically list on their applications. Admissions wants to know about these types of activities to make sure they are capturing information about a range of different students
What are your personal thoughts about Legacy admissions and should a similar ruling be applied to legacy that was applied around race consideration?
SB:
While it seems likely that at a school like Harvard, legacy would vastly disproportionately advantage certain folks and not be in line with reflecting the broader country’s population, we need more data regarding the alumni populations at specific schools to assess the effects.
CL:
HC in a process of reevaluating our Legacy admission process.
Given current pending lawsuits and active legislation in many states to ban legacy admissions, there is a good chance that Legacy will go away in the next few years
At HC, at least in the last 10 years, legacy has been just one of many factors considered in the admission process
Getting rid of legacy will not immediately increase diversity. The way to increase diversity is to increase the resources you’re giving out
The admissions process as it stands was built to advantage the advantaged. Metrics like standardized test scores, rec letters, essays, etc., were requirements that were created many years ago to keep certain people out, not to let them in.
Another opportunity to reimagine the admissions process
