The Future Of Affirmative Action and How It Will Affect Students
By Aidan O’Sullivan
Every year Harvard University admits a select few students to be a part of their new freshmen class. Harvard prides itself on having the best and brightest, building the future leaders of not just the United States but the world.
According to Harvard’s website, 15 percent of Harvard’s latest admitted freshman class, the class of 2026, is African-American, the percentage of African-Americans admitted to Harvard is roughly 2 percent points above the percentage of the US population that is black.
In 1976, according to a Washington Post article from 1989, the number was at eight percent, an improvement from Harvard at the time, but far below current numbers. One of the main reasons for Harvard’s increase in diversity can be attributed to affirmative action. This is true of many universities across America.
“I don’t think race affected my admissions process,” SKHS senior Ryan Pandolfini stated. Pandolfini said he will be attending the University of Rhode Island this fall.
While race may have not affected Pandolfini’s admissions process, it certainly has affected many since the adoption of affirmative action.
Affirmative action is the practice of seeking to include various groups of people who have long been denied admittance, based on race, sex, gender, etc. Since its inception affirmative action has been used to promote the inclusion of groups that have been underrepresented, particularly different races and ethnicities, in various institutions and in this context universities.
Affirmative action is not without its critics. One such critic is Edward Blum, a conservative activist, who is not a lawyer, who heads the group Students for Fair Admissions, an organization that represents thousands of students and parents and has filed lawsuits on their behalf, alleging that numerous students have been rejected from elite universities due to their race.
Blum and his organization’s motivation for striking down affirmative action is quite simple. Speaking to Time Magazine, Blum stated that “the mission of Students for Fair Admissions, the sole mission, is to end the use of race and ethnicity in college admissions.”
Blum also critiqued the preferences universities had in the admissions process, including Harvard.
Blum said, “Our expert showed that if Harvard abandoned legacy preferences, if they abandoned preferences for the children of faculty and staff, if they gave less of a preference to certain athletic teams, stopped giving preferences to kids on the Dean’s List — which means the donors list in stark terms,” Harvard could maintain its racial diversity along with lowering its socioeconomic standards, all without race being considered. According to Blum, however, Harvard and previous court decisions have rejected this notion.
In recent years, regarding the practice of affirmative action, Blum and his group have sued the likes of Harvard, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and previously the University of Texas.
Blum most recently sued Harvard and UNC in the Supreme Court. The case, titled Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, finds fault with both universities’ application of affirmative action in efforts to deem such practices as discriminatory and, therefore, unconstitutional.
Many legal experts and universities believe the implications of both cases will be far-reaching, with the demographics of universities undergoing a possible facelift in the near future, especially if the Court rules in favor of Blum.
Many point to the University of California at Los Angeles, otherwise known as UCLA, as a prime example. The University of California system has been ethnically blind for years meaning the university cannot consider a student’s race or ethnicity in their admissions. The change in policy was mandated following Proposition 209, which was on the ballot in California and approved in 1996. Under this policy, UCLA’s student body is only five percent black according to their own website. Being ethnically blind would become the norm without affirmative action.
UCLA is not the only UC that struggles with diversity. In fact, the same is true of UC Berkeley and other top UC schools.
According to local college admissions advisor Cristiana Quinn, who advises high school students on their college prospects, many models exist beyond just looking at a student’s ethnicity or race.
“Colleges can look at socio-economic status, zip codes for poor and rural communities, form bonds with very diverse high schools, and focus on first-generation students,” Quinn said.
While colleges such as UCLA use the previously mentioned practices, many of these universities struggle to introduce diversity at their colleges. Not just affirmative action could be at stake with the upcoming cases, with other practices like early decision under attack.
Another casualty of Blum’s case may be the end of early decision, an admission policy in which students apply early to a university and sign a binding agreement that they will attend said university the next fall if admitted. Early decision because of its high yield rate, which is the percentage of students who were admitted by a university, who go on to attend said university, is very attractive to schools and subsequently has higher acceptance rates because they know nearly all of the students accepted during early decision will go on to attend their university.
Another Ivy League school, Dartmouth University has an acceptance rate of 9.2 percent, but according to Dartmouth’s own published data, when considering early decision acceptance rates at Dartmouth, acceptance rates soar to 24.89 percent, nearly three times the university’s typical acceptance.
Many critics of early decision often point out how the system benefits the privileged. Research shows that early-decision applicants are three times more likely to be white. According to the Center for American Progress, the binding nature of early decision which does not allow students to compare financial aid packages often makes early decision unaffordable for underprivileged students.
Many South Kingstown High School students do not appear to be too concerned about the possible changes.
“An admissions process with affirmative action would help, but wouldn’t be the end of the world for me,” said Daniel Wheeler, a junior at SKHS, who is also African American. “Early decision and legacy would not affect me too much personally,” Wheeler added.
Other students likewise do not really seem concerned about early decision.
“I would never apply early decision,” Dylan Waddell, another SK junior, stated, “but I have no issues with the prospect because if people really want to go to a specific college they should have the right to make a binding decision.”
Waddell, however, did not have the same feeling about legacy, where colleges often prefer a student whose parents attended the college. “I believe that the legacy system creates a certain barrier to entry for people who do not have family who attended the university, “ Waddell said. “It is an advantage they do not have.”
Many SKHS seniors shared similar feelings based on their admissions process.
Pandolfini stated how he did not think race affected his own admissions process personally, but he did note that “universities may want certain groups” and added that “at different universities, my chances definitely could have been affected.”
Julian Tamayo, another senior at SKHS, believes that without affirmative action his admissions chances “might have had a more negative effect,” believing that Asian-American applicants would benefit the most in his opinion because they have better applications in terms of test scores and grades, hurting him and others with weaker applications. Tamayo also added that early decision and legacy “probably didn’t have much of an effect for the schools I was accepted into, but maybe more of an effect for the more competitive schools I applied to.”
Not everyone holds the same view on affirmative action. Waddell, who is white, believes that an admissions process without affirmative action would likely help his college admissions.
Antonio Pagan, a junior at SKHS, believes colleges “need to fill in the spots,” thus benefiting him because of his Hispanic background. Pagan added that “without affirmative action, my chances might not change much,” but he was also uncertain what a future without it may look like.
In general, most students at SKHS supported affirmative action or did not really seem to have an opinion on the subject.
“I think it[affirmative action] promotes more diverse colleges,” Tamayo remarked.
Yet Tamayo and other students appeared to lack knowledge of the pending Supreme Court cases which many experts believe will change college admissions.
One issue that has not been discussed in the upcoming court cases and news is VIP donor admissions, where rich parents make large donations to a university, in a completely legal way, which allegedly boosts their child’s chances to be admitted.
“What we need to talk about beyond legacy admissions is VIP donor admissions,” said the local college admissions advisor Quinn. “Very large donors are often permitted to support a certain number of applicants each year and that can be as big a problem as legacy admissions.”
Donations have long been a tool in elite colleges’ repertoire for fundraising. The University of Southern California, for example, tagged applicants from big-donor and connected families as “VIPs” according to federal court documents that were a part of the recent “Varsity Blues” admissions scandal.
This practice is not just limited to USC, with Yale and the University of Virginia also having been accused of tagging VIPs. According to the Yale Daily News, Yale admissions officers commonly met with the children of donors and offered them services not available to most. And according to the Washington Post, the University of Virginia has a “watch list” for the children of donors and wealthy alums to receive special handling.
Many of these practices were exposed in the wake of the “Varsity Blues” debacle which embroiled both celebrities and elite universities, including USC, Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown.
Though plenty of these donations remain perfectly legal, many critics contend that allowing affluent students an easy path to the university of their dreams makes the system appear rigged. Nonetheless, such donations and this method of acceptance appear safe for now.
Yet Affirmative action does not have this same safety and many experts believe that its elimination may have a dramatic effect on not just colleges but America as a whole.
“Ending affirmative action has the potential to diminish diversity on campus socially and most importantly in the classroom,” Quinn stated.
“It can also take away an important opportunity for underserved students to break the cycle of poverty,” something Quinn strongly believes benefits the entire nation.
