The Supreme Court ruled to strike down affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard, ending the systematic consideration of race in the admissions process on June 29.
The vote at UNC was 6-3 and 6-2 at Harvard as the court ruled that both programs violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and are thus unlawful.
The court's decision is a disadvantage for minority students as it undoes decades of precedents that upheld race-conscious admissions policies as "consistent" with the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor condemned the Supreme Court's decision in a written statement, stating that the decision cements "a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and will continue to matter."
In fact, the decision to overturn Affirmative Action will significantly hurt states that have already banned affirmative action in higher education. For example, in 2021, the percentage of students who identified as Black at the University of Michigan dropped to 4%. In contrast, it was at 7% in 2006, before Michigan voters prohibited admitting students to college based on their race.
I am an LGBTQIA+ Ashkenazi Jewish-American student at California State University, Northridge. CSUN is well known for being one of the most diverse schools in California and within the California State University system, with 77% of its student body identifying as minorities. However, California's ban on affirmative action dates back to 1996, when Proposition 209 was passed against UCLA and UC Berkeley.
The decision to ban affirmative action has continued to hurt students who specifically apply to schools in the University of California system, as they are deemed more prestigious. Despite this, the state is trying to recruit more minority students through other means.
Ever since conservatives have taken control of the Supreme Court, they have made two decisions that have drastically changed how society looks at people within the past year. The overturning of Roe v. Wade caused women to fight for their constitutional right to have an abortion. This year, Black and Latinx students may not have a chance at getting into their dream schools or get a college degree.
They also have made it clear that if you're a black or Latinx student applying in the STEM fields at a school in a state that has banned affirmative action, your chances of getting in are lower.
Should the ban on considering race in college admissions be active nationwide, the number of minority students attending college will decrease, especially in public medical schools in states that do not allow affirmative action, as their admission rate numbers dropped by nearly 5%.
If this isn't bad enough, the number of minority students that have earned a STEM degree in the same states also fell approximately by 10% in the past five years since the bans set in.
The affirmative action ban means one thing: Less diversity. We won't have many Black lawyers who will become partners, judges and justices of the United States Supreme Court, we won't have many Latinx doctors in the country, and there will be even fewer Native Americans in the world of STEM, where it is predominantly white.
College is a chance for students to hear stories and viewpoints from people who come from different backgrounds. While merit absolutely should be considered in the admissions process, we should also listen to why these students applied to college in the first place.
(Article changed on Aug 08, 2023 at 6:22 PM EDT)
