The U.S. Supreme Court could decide as soon as this week on cases challenging race-conscious college admissions practices, also known as affirmative action.
Some legal experts say it’s likely the court rules that colleges can no longer consider race when making admissions decisions. In Oregon, many colleges are already working to figure out how that type of decision could affect admissions processes and future students.
At the private Lewis & Clark College, President Robin Holmes-Sullivan said the institution uses a “holistic” approach to review student applications. Race can be considered as part of that. Holmes-Sullivan said the college plans to welcome its most ethnically diverse group of undergraduate students to campus this fall.
“LC students are encouraged to view the world through a variety of different lenses as part of their education. Interacting with people from all kinds of different backgrounds is an important aspect of students’ preparation to live, work and lead in an increasingly diverse society,” Holmes-Sullivan said in a statement to OPB.
Holmes-Sullivan said the Portland college will carefully review the Supreme Court’s decision when it arrives in order to understand the impact.
FILE: Lewis & Clark College reflecting pool and Frank Manor House.
Hanin Najjar / OPB
“We will remain in compliance with all federal laws and guidelines,” she said. “But we will also remain strongly committed to fostering an institutional culture that values diverse perspectives and a community where everyone belongs.”
David Schraub, an assistant professor at Lewis & Clark’s Law School, said it seems “more likely than not” that the Supreme Court will reverse many years of legal precedent that allowed affirmative action at colleges and universities. The biggest questions are just how sweeping the court’s ruling will be and “how aggressively it will instruct lower courts to police university admissions decisions going forward,” Schraub said.
But Schraub said it’s doubtful that universities will just give up on racial diversity on campus, regardless of the court’s ruling.
“If the court bans race-conscious admissions standards, colleges will probably seek to find race-blind admissions criteria that nonetheless have the effect of admitting diverse entering classes,” he said.
Some colleges in Oregon already do not use race-conscious admissions practices. Portland State University is one of them, yet it continues to enroll some of the most racially diverse student cohorts across the state’s public universities.
People of color made up nearly 40% of the students enrolled at Portland State last fall, making PSU the most ethnically diverse school out of the largest universities in the state.
The University of Oregon had a population of about 33% students of color last fall while Oregon State University had just under 30%.
Chuck Knepfle, PSU’s vice president for enrollment management, said there are many reasons why Portland State continues to enroll students of color without having to rely on race-conscious admissions. He said the university has good support structures for low-income and first-generation students, many of whom also happen to be students of color. The school also does direct outreach to community organizations focused on communities of color, such as Self Enhancement Inc. — a nonprofit serving Black youth and families.
“We have a very good reputation of taking students who are first-generation and low-income and bringing them out of generational poverty,” Knepfle said. “We’ve been recognized as a school that has a lot of parity in how our Pell Grant and non-Pell grant students succeed.”
But admitting students is only half the battle. Knepfle said support through PSU’s cultural resource centers, like the Native American Student Center and La Casa Latina Student Center, helps give students of color a sense of community and belonging on campus.
Although a decision against affirmative action from the Supreme Court might not directly impact PSU’s admissions practices, there are still concerns on campus.
“Portland State believes that as many people as we can get to go to college, whether they come to Portland State or not, that’s important,” Knepfle said. “So if a negative ruling on admission comes out and fewer diverse students are being admitted to a fewer number of colleges, it’s bad for the country. It’s bad for the world.”
Knepfle said there’s a lot of uncertainty over how strict the Supreme Court’s ruling could be. If, for example, the court rules that colleges and universities cannot even ask for students’ race or ethnicity on applications, that could upend parts of PSU’s enrollment process — such as letting students of color know about culturally-specific resources on campus before they decide on PSU.
“If we don’t have that information until they enroll, that’s not something we can talk to them about,” Knepfle said. “So losing the data, even though we’re not using it for admissions decisions, would hurt us and hurt the students going forward.”
Knepfle also has other worries about the Supreme Court’s decision; for example, it’s unclear whether the court might go beyond admissions and also rule that student support programs or scholarships cannot be race-based.
Although Oregon institutions are wrestling with the potential impact of the court’s upcoming ruling, “race-blind” admissions already exist in some places. Multiple states, including Washington and California, have already banned the use of race in admissions decisions.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the number of Black and Latino incoming first-year students declined by nearly half at UCLA and UC Berkeley in 1998, the first year of California’s ban on affirmative action.
The number of incoming freshman students of color enrolled at the University of Washington fell by roughly 30% in 1999, after the passage of Washington’s anti-affirmative action law, according to the university.
Voters rejected an effort to bring back affirmative action in Washington in 2019.
In almost all states that banned affirmative action, selective colleges with low admission rates have seen less Black and Latino representation on campus, according to a report out of Georgetown University earlier this year.
Still, Knepfle with PSU said he’s hopeful Oregon colleges and universities will “keep up the fight” regardless of what the court decides.
“Although we’re not expecting a super positive result, we being the education community, it could be written in a way that still allows us a lot of flexibility and a lot of options, and there will be schools who push those to the limit because they believe in this,” he said. “The things that I’ve read and how frustrated people are and the things that they’re going to try, it gives me a lot of hope in our education system and in Oregon especially.”
Ben Cannon, the executive director of Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission, also said in a statement that he has faith Oregon’s higher education institutions will stay committed to supporting students of color.
He said his agency will continue to work with the state’s colleges and universities on “policies and strategies that continue our progress towards ensuring that all students are welcomed and have the opportunity to thrive.”