From the span of time between midnight and 6:00 a.m., Reddit’s “r/chanceme” subreddit bursts with desperate seniors (and tryhard juniors) asking strangers on the internet about their chances of getting into colleges A, B and C and any ways to strengthen their already aggressively fantastic résumé.
Especially in recent years, applying to universities has become an increasingly difficult process, with students scrounging for strong extracurriculars and leadership opportunities to set them apart from the rest. It’s safe to say that competition has never been more harsh.
As competition increases, more questions have been asked about the application process. Specifically, the implementation of race-based positive discrimination, more commonly known as affirmative action, has arose heated controversy concerning its effects. Under this policy, high education universities are expected to give acceptances to underrepresented races in order to promote diversity and remedy past discrimination in education and employment.
AP Government teacher Sam Atwood has continued to cover affirmative action cases in his classes to educate his students on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
“The overall argument for supporting affirmative action is, if admissions were race bound, and schools did not know the race of students, most elite schools would be a lot less diverse than they are currently,” Atwood said. “The opposing side [of the argument] would be that race is something that is out of a student’s control… and any government system who treats people differently because of their race is not okay, even if the end goal is diversity.”
After nearly a decade of redirecting to different levels of state courts, this January, the Supreme Court accepted two cases concerning affirmative action: Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
SFFA is suing on different grounds in these lawsuits to target affirmative action in public and private institutions.
In the Students v. Harvard case, SFFA asserts that “discriminating against Asian American applicants in favor of white applicants” disregards Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits exclusion or discrimination due to race, color, or national origin “under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
On the other hand, in SFFA v. University of North Carolina, the petitioner is suing on the basis that race-based affirmative action admissions processes violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.
Some of the history behind the case involves previous precedent set in the 2003 Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger. In a 5-4 decision, the justices voted to uphold affirmative action in student admissions for now. Moderate conservatives pushed for a 25-year window, making the policy temporary. As the 25 years comes to a close, the debate rages on.
Unlike many other cases that the court hears, the affirmative action dispute isn’t necessarily divided along party lines. Some minorities disapprove of affirmative action because the practice hurts their chances of getting into university despite high performance, while others believe it is for the greater good, despite its faults.
One of the concerns raised against SFFA was the precedent set by the possibility of getting rid of affirmative action. This could cause an extreme change in college applications and how they are viewed by admissions officers. Based on recordings from the SCOTUS hearings so far, schools could allow immigration status of students, but not race.
“If there’s a Black student applying to UNC from North Carolina, the school can’t consider that, but if you have a student who just immigrated from Botswana, the school can consider that. That seems kind of arbitrary,” Atwood said.
Khang Tran, a third year computer science major at UNC of Vietnamese descent, is supportive of affirmative action.
“The main idea of affirmative action is to have more people from low income families getting into college,” Tran said. “If [affirmative action is removed], we might see less people from different races, thus less diversity”
While SFFA accused UNC and Harvard of discriminating again Asian students, Tran disagreed.
“The lawsuit suggests that Harvard and UNC are discriminating against Asian students—I believe that’s not the case at all,” Tran said. “I think universities just want to make sure everyone has an equal chance of getting in.”
Tran also elaborated on Harvard, and why affirmative action is also necessary in private universities by tackling the topic of legacies.
“If your parents are Harvard alumni, you are more likely to get in. That’s just an unfair advantage.”
According to the New York Times and admissions websites, the legacy admission rate can reach as high as 14 percent with around 36 percent of the Harvard Class of 2022 claiming relation to a past student.
If affirmative action is ended by the Supreme Court decision, one way to increase diversity without relying on race is through socioeconomic filters, a policy Atwood acknowledges.
“In theory, you could go off of socioeconomic background, and that would be a race-neutral way to do it. I don’t know if that would benefit just poor white students, or also poor Black students…but I think it could potentially be a way to do it,” Atwood said.
A decision from the conservative-majority court is expected in the late spring or early summer of 2023.
Photo courtesy of Johnny Andrews/UNC-Chapel Hill
