Centerpiece AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

In recent months, two legal cases have gained growing visibility as they climbed through the federal courts. e national discourse surrounding these cases has resurrected an issue that has fueled debate in the United States since the 1960s: a rmative action.

In October 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. Both cases take aim at the use of race as a factor in college admissions.

How the Supreme Court rules on these cases in the months ahead could alter the admissions processes of elite educational institutions around the country, although such changes would take time to be implemented and could be met with challenges.

“Even if we did see a very dramatic decision, it would take a long time [to implement] and universities have said that they will ght to continue to be able to cra the kind of classes that they want to,” said Upper School History Department Chair Amy Bresie ’96.

A rmative action is the legal recognition that certain minority groups have historically faced challenges being accepted into higher education and nding jobs in the workforce.

As a result, many corporations and universities consider race, ethnicity and gender as factors in admissions in an attempt to aid historically and systematically disadvantaged groups.

Some groups – including some minority groups who contend they are being disadvantaged by a rmative action policies –are pushing back.

Students for Fair Admissions is a national nonpro t organization that contends that “racial classi cations and preferences in college admissions are unfair, unnecessary and unconstitutional,” according to the group’s website. Much of the group’s funding comes from known conservative organizations, including DonorsTrust, Searle Freedom Trust, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.

e group has led three lawsuits against institutions of higher education in the last ve years, including the two cases that the Supreme Court is currently hearing and a landmark 2016 case against the University of Texas at Austin.

In that earlier case, Fisher v. University of Texas, the Supreme Court upheld UT-Austin’s race-conscious admissions policy. e decision stated that race as a factor in admissions “promotes cross-racial understanding, helps to break down racial stereotypes and enables students to better understand persons of di erent races.”

Now despite previous rulings, the same issue sits before the Supreme Court once again.

“It is about history,” Head of Equity and Inclusion Marcus Ingram said. “In another way, it’s about what’s happening now and thinking about who has access to certain experiences, resources, etc. [It’s about] what our responsibility is now in order to help address that.” e earliest forms of a rmative action came in quotas. Many universities and corporations would set aside a certain number of seats for minority applicants, in an attempt to rectify the legacy of discrimination. is changed in 1978 when Allan Bakke, a white man who was twice denied admission to the medical school at the University of California at Davis, sued the school, challenging the constitutionality of its a rmative action admissions policies. Amid avid public interest, the case ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

A rmative action policies rst started in 1965 under President Lyndon B. Johnson, a er he passed an executive order prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of race, religion or national origin. Following this order, a rmative action policies were introduced in both higher education and the workforce.

In a contentious 5-4 ruling, the court upheld a rmative action in college admissions. e Supreme Court also ruled that quotas could not be used to diversify the student body of a college or university.

Countless studies have shown that racial minorities have faced discrimination in the United States. at discrimination has manifested itself in multiple ways, including wealth and educational disparities among communities of color.

A 2021 study conducted by the Federal Reserve found that the average net worth of a white household is over three times greater than that of a Black or Hispanic household.

In terms of admissions to highly selective colleges and universities, these opportunity gaps make it di cult for some students to be considered competitive in applicant pools, said senior Madison Rojas.

Senior Ryan Xie said he agrees with this sentiment, but he believes that a rmative action is not an e ective way to help alleviate inequality. In Xie’s view, a rmative action unfairly focuses on more on equality of outcomes instead of equality of opportunity.

“[Harvard is] trying to have the outcome of admissions be more fair, whereas instead they should be focused more on [giving] opportunities,” Xie said. “ ey should ensure that students from all minorities are given the same resources to succeed in their schools and get the same quality education as compared to making sure to give these people who don’t have these opportunities more slots. Focusing on outcomes is unfair to everybody.”

Rojas emphasizes the opportunity di erence between certain communities in America, which decreases opportunities people have of getting into prestigious universities.

“When you are living in a community in which the schools are falling apart, there are no extracurricular activities, you can’t switch to a di erent school district because you live in a certain zip code, your teachers are the same people who are your coaches, you are not able to take tutoring classes for the SAT or [American College Testing] and you do not have access to adults that can help with application essays,” Rojas said. “All of those barriers make it di cult to become a ‘good student.’” e move away from a rmative action is a mistake, some Greenhill students, faculty and administrators contend.

Advocacy groups say a rmative action serves to “level the playing eld” for groups that have been placed at a systemic disadvantage so that higher education can be diversi ed. Outreach campaigns, targeted recruitment and employee diversity training are at the forefront of a rmative action programs in the workforce.

California was the rst state to outlaw a rmative action in 1996, and the impact on college admissions has been striking. Only 5% of the undergraduate population at the University of California, Los Angeles was Black in 2020, considerably lower than Harvard’s rate, which was 15.8% in the same year.

“[A rmative action] serves to address and ameliorate the inequalities, historical systemic inequalities, in education and hiring practices that have been caused by systemic racism,” said Associate Director of Equity and Inclusion Monsie Muñoz ’05. “I’ve seen the bene ts to entire communities, not just the individuals, which is why a rmative action is so important. It has been proven that diversifying a community strengthens the whole community.”

Within higher education today, a rmative action policies

“Colleges and universities interpret a rmative-action policies and put them into action in their own individual ways, which are proprietary and not generally shared with the public,” the Greenhill College Counseling o ce said in a written response to questions. Many elite colleges and universities will evaluate applications by employing a “holistic review” of each student. Rather than focusing on any one factor or attribute of the applicant, a holistic admissions process aims to learn about the “whole” applicant, including academics and extracurriculars, with each component of a student’s application considered in the context of the others.

In 2016, the Supreme Court held that race could be considered as “a factor of a factor of a factor” in a holistic review process with the intention of diversifying student bodies.

“In many cases where you’re talking about elite institutions, their particular [admissions] processes are designed to better understand as much as possible about who individual applicants are,” Ingram said. “ e submitted materials aren’t just quantitative measures like grades and standardized testing scores. ey’re an important folio of this person’s story.”

However, race continues to be an uncomfortable topic of discussion in many spaces, Muñoz said.

“If we are being honest about why a rmative action is before the Supreme Court again and why it’s becoming such a contemporary issue yet again, it’s [because] we’re not comfortable having conversations about race and gender, both of which are socially constructed categories to a degree, and they’ve shi ed over time,” Ingram said.

Muñoz says this hesitancy to explore the barriers faced by marginalized groups doesn’t stop at the personal level, but rather extends to institutions and society writ large. e process of unlearning these habits and bridging historical and systemic divides will take time, she said.

“Most [colleges and universities in the United States] were originally created for a select group of people: those who identify as white,” Muñoz said. “Many of them were not created with the idea of a person that checked o other boxes in mind. And so it takes a while to kind of get into the habit of including those people that were never included in your community.”

College applications and admissions is a constant focus of many Upper School students, and that has centered affirmative action in ongoing campus conversations.

Some students do not support a rmative action practices, as they contend that raceconscious admissions processes punish some minority students, especially Asians and Asian-Americans.

“[A rmative action] was founded on the basis of trying to provide equal opportunity,” Xie said. “But it has gotten to the point where a rmative action has just become fundamentally racist.”

Xie said that personal success and merit should be the primary benchmark by which students are evaluated in selective admissions, not race.

“It’s o en not possible to tell anymore whether a given student genuinely deserved admission into a top college, an applicant landing a highly competitive job, someone achieving something great, or whether he or she is there by virtue of tting into some sort of false diversity narrative,” he said.

Junior Aditya Pulipaka agrees with this, adding that the consideration of race perpetuates racial divides.

“I understand why [colleges] are doing it,” Pulipaka said. “ ey want more diversity. But additionally, they seem to be denying more quali ed people entry into their college due to their race, which still feels like an extension of racism. It still distinguishes based on race, which I believe should not be done.”

Other students appreciate the application of a rmative action as a means of undoing past racism and diversifying institutions.

“I see it as a good thing,” Rojas said. “I think that rst of all, there are always deserving people from communities, whether Black and brown communities or other communities who deserve to go to college, who deserve to be on those campuses. And that [a rmative action] is just another tool to make sure that they have access to that kind of opportunity.”

For Bresie, the larger implications of a rmative action and what it stands for should be at the forefront of the conversation.

“I think that sometimes righting a historic wrong is more important than an individual achieving something that they want,” ey have been set up for success in a myriad of ways.”

Bresie said. “ at’s not to say that I don’t value everybody’s dreams, but that is to say that people who are not getting into Harvard still have plenty of opportunities and good things that will happen to them in their lives.

Several studies have shown that diverse spaces bene t students both socially and educationally.

“Universities are trying to create diverse classes of students by getting people in from all di erent walks of life, from di erences in economic areas, from di erent races and ethnicities,” Bresie said. “And by doing all of that, they are actually creating a better experience for everybody.”

While a rmative action in college admissions has become a contentious topic of debate around the country, it is mainly argued in the context of elite universities whose student bodies account for a small fraction of the total number of students pursuing higher education across the country, Ingram noted.

“When we think about those elite institutions and the number of spots that they have available and the number of people who are actually going to go there and the pro le of students, that’s a really limited sliver of who our population is in this country,” Ingram said. “And the amount of churn in all of the community about this small group of spots, it’s fascinating because people personalize these cases.”

In 2018, the lawsuit led by Edward Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions, alleged that a rmative action unfairly discriminates against Asian Americans. In order to support their argument, the plainti s invoked what has become known as the Model Minority Myth.

e term “Model Minority” was rst coined by sociologist William Peterson in a 1966 article he wrote commending the success that Japanese Americans were able to achieve, despite the racist barriers they had to overcome. Since then, this term has grown to become a stereotype that broadly characterizes Asians as a hardworking group that is highly successful in both academic and professional aspects.

In multiple cases against a rmative action, plainti s have argued that because of this stereotype universities hold Asians to a higher standard.

Consequently, raceconscious admissions ultimately harm the chances of Asian students seeking admission to elite colleges and universities, critics of a rmative action contend.

“It goes back to basing everything o of race,” Xie said. “And perhaps, the most tragic side e ect of a rmative action is that the very signi cant achievements of minority individuals can become compromised.”

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, Asian American students on average have higher grade point averages, more extracurriculars and better SAT scores than those of other races. However, a study done by Georgetown University shows that they are being admitted to elite institutions at equal and lower rates than other races, and that’s provoked a backlash from some Asians.

“I think this sort of idea of a model minority in some ways is toxic,” Muñoz said. “It’s just another way for people of color to ght amongst themselves. I do not want to minimize how those students or families feel, but I think that it is a narrative that’s been created to push this idea that ‘forced’ diversity is not good.”

With the current Supreme Court term set to end in June, court watchers expect a ruling on the two race-conscious admissions cases sometime this spring. For universities, this could mean editing their language and admissions policies before a new college application season begins in the fall.

What changes that might portend for Upper School students in the college application process will likely hinge on how the court rules. In the meantime, Greenhill’s college counselors said the high court’s decision won’t a ect how they approach the process with Upper School students.

“[A Supreme Court ruling] would not a ect how we counsel students, as these policies are devised and applied by colleges and universities internally, not by college counselors,” the College Counseling o ce said in its written response to questions. “We would continue to start with individual students and their talents and interests, working with them to identify great college matches.”