This June, when the Supreme Court overturned the affirmative-action admissions programs of Harvard and the University of North Carolina, it left open a crack in the door for colleges and universities that wanted to respond.
The Court pointed out that there were limits to its decision. Writing for the Court’s 6-3 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts observed that “nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”
Now the small liberal arts college at which I teach has taken Roberts at his word.
In the application form we are getting ready for the fall, students are invited to write 250-500 word essays on one of three topics: How they expect to unite their disparate interests in college. What they would like to explore in their classes over the next four years. The impact on them of the Supreme Court’s June affirmative-action ruling.
The third option is the one already drawing attention. It begins by quoting directly from the syllabus of the Court’s decision in the Harvard and University of North Carolina case: “Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is tied to the quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can bring to the university.”
The question then goes on to ask applicants to use examples from their own lives on how their goals for a college education might be affected by the Court’s decision.
The question is one that will give students who think they have been hurt by racism a chance to talk about the Supreme Court adding to their problems. But that is not the only possible approach to the question. A student does not have to be a victim of racism to answer this question thoughtfully. It’s possible for students of color who think the Court’s decision frees them from being stereotyped to address that complex issue, and it’s possible for white students to write on whether they believe the Court’s decision makes it more or less likely they will be judged on their own merits.
The options for answering this question are many. Serious students are certainly going to go online and read some or all of the Court’s affirmative-action ruling.
I’m confident that at a small college like mine where applications are read carefully, this question on the Court’s ruling will be a plus. Perhaps we are tempting litigation? But by using the Court’s words in an essay prompt, what I think we are really doing is showing we can act according to the letter of the law without being weighed down by the law.
“This Supreme Court, not us, is ignoring recent history.”
By virtue of the biographical self-examination that students answering this question offer us, we will have a chance to make fairer decisions on who will be in our entering class for next year than if we simply went along with the Roberts ruling or confined ourselves to grumbling.
This Supreme Court, not us, is ignoring recent history. It has abandoned affirmative-action precedent going back to 1978 and the Bakke case, which introduced the idea that race could be a “plus” in higher-education admissions.
In the future, colleges and universities are going to have to see if class-based affirmative action, which includes lower-income, white students, who often rightly feel the disadvantages they labor under are ignored, can be used more effectively than in the past to achieve diversity. A class-based approach to admissions has the potential to be an easier political sell than race-based affirmative action, and so far it has not come under legal fire.
A new chapter in the struggle to achieve diversity in college and university admission is just beginning, and as this battle takes shape, I’m cheered by the start my college has made. Right now, I’m hoping we have imitators.
Nicolaus Mills is professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College and author of Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi 1964—The Turning of the Civil Rights Movement in America.
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