There is currently a lawsuit against UNC-Chapel Hill which argues that the school’s admissions policies are in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act for discriminating against potential students on the basis of their race. My first reaction was that this was just a group of pissed off, entitled white students whose rich white parents taught them to feel like they had already been accepted when they entered the ninth grade. However, upon further review, I found that the case that Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. made was both well-grounded and something to be seriously concerned about.
In their investigation, the group found a demographic breakdown of recent applicant pools and freshman classes that were actually admitted into the university. These records included academic achievement statistics and extracurricular involvement. In their analysis of this data, they found that the biggest determinant of admission versus rejection decisions among the highest academically achieving students was race.
For the students at the top of the academic index, 99 percent of black applicants were accepted. However, only 44.9 percent of applicants of identical academic achievement were accepted if they were white, and 49.3 percent if they were Asian American. This trend is present on the lower end as well, as about a quarter of lower-achieving black applicants were admitted while Asian American and white students of equal academic standing had virtually no chance of getting in.
This can’t be right. And it isn’t legal either. One of the most relevant precedents set on university admissions came through the United States Supreme Court decision of Regents v. Bakke. In this ruling, the court declared that racial quotas were not in agreement with Title VI, and that race is only an acceptable factor in admissions as one among others, a “plus factor,” if you will, not as a primary determinant or a prerequisite for acceptance.
The “holistic approach” that Chapel Hill claims to use is simply a facade used to justify the policies which its officers use to racially engineer the student population. What is going on down the road from us is far from a “plus factor,” and not supportive of an institution that is supposed to value intellectual abilities and diversity of thought above all else. As a fellow UNC System school, we need to stay aware of where other universities falter in their admissions, to combat these problems on our own campus.
Regardless of the values and reasoning of these admissions officers, however good-natured they are, racial discrimination cannot happen in the university setting. Chapel Hill has gone well beyond an embrace of diversity and instead taken the regressive path of a diversity fixation. In its headstrong fight against a history of discrimination, UNC-CH has lost sight of the goal of fairness and equality and has landed squarely back where it began: a school full of hypocrites who care more about skin color than real qualifications.
Universities need smart and capable people. The old ways meant that you had to be smart, capable, rich, white and male to be accepted. This was poor policy. The new ways seem to indicate that the most reliable way to be admitted (at least at UNC-CH) is to be smart, capable and black. This, too, is poor policy.
Diversity in schools is not a goal that taxpayers must pay for a diversity admissions director to achieve, it is a natural trait of the academic environment. There are smart and capable people from all walks of life, and universities everywhere, including NC State, can provide a diverse snapshot of the best and brightest young folks the country has to offer when they take those high achievers regardless of their demographics.
I support a different policy for admissions. As opposed to putting admissions officers in a position where they can, intentionally or otherwise, discriminate against potential students, university officials ought to be provided a redacted application that contains no demographic information about the student, not even their name.
Instead, they ought to only be able to access the immense amount of other information about their applicants provided through their academic records, schools of attendance, essay writing, and letters of recommendation in their decision to admit applicant number 011245 as opposed to applicant 011246. The end result will be a well-reasoned and carefully selected student body that has diversity of thought and reflects the diverse demographics of our great nation.
For current students, we have no way of knowing what part our race played in the school’s decision to admit us. All we can do is hope it had nothing to do with it. Past applicants who were denied admission can have no more confidence than we do. While the case against Chapel Hill has yet to be argued in court, there is still a way to prevent discrimination from happening here.
I urge you to have the courage to stand against discrimination, wherever you see it may be lurking. Question the processes that lack transparency. Ask your student government to petition the Board of Governors to limit what admissions officers see and insist on making the process more transparent, so those who come after us can proudly take a selfie with their letter of acceptance or experience the sadness of not making it in to our great school knowing that the process was a fair one.
