In a 6-3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled to ban affirmative action at colleges and universities. Justices heard two cases brought forward by the group Students for Fair Admission, who challenged race-based admission practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
Sabrina Sommer is the equity specialist for the David Douglas School District. Eric Staab is the vice president of Admissions and Financial Aid at Lewis & Clark College. And Scott Vignos is the vice president and chief diversity officer at Oregon State University. They all join us now to share what these decisions will mean for Oregon students and the impacts they believe it could have on Oregon colleges and universities.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. In a 6-2 decision last week the US Supreme Court banned affirmative action at colleges and universities. Justices heard two cases that challenged race-based admission practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The conservative majority struck down decades of precedent saying that colleges and universities cannot consider race as one of many factors when deciding who to let in. For more on what this could mean in Oregon I’m joined by three guests. Eric Staab is the Vice President of Admissions and Financial Aid at Lewis & Clark College. Scott Vignos the vice president and chief diversity officer at Oregon State University, and Sabrina Sommer is the equity specialist for the David Douglas School District. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Eric Staab: Thank you.
Scott Vignos: Thank you.
Miller: Scott Vignos first, just from a big picture perspective and from an institution’s perspective, what’s the benefit of having a diverse student population?
Vignos: What we know about having diverse student populations in colleges and universities is that there are a number of benefits that not only flow to students of color and other underrepresented students, but actually to everyone. Diverse classrooms create better critical thinking, more lively conversations, they allow students to see multiple viewpoints. And not only that, what we know about workforces that tend to be more globally connected, particularly in a place like Oregon, is that these are skills that employers really want, they want students who have worked in teams that are diverse with lots of different kinds of people. And so there are a number of real tangible benefits that flow from diverse student bodies.
Miller: Eric Staab, does Lewis & Clark currently use race as one of the components in admissions decisions?
Staab: We use a holistic approach in our review of applications for admission. First and foremost, all applicants must be academically prepared to succeed at Lewis & Clark. The average unweighted grade point average of our admitted student body is roughly a 3.8. These are really bright young students that we feel will make a difference in the world.
Ultimately, my job is about bringing academically qualified students to Lewis & Clark who will make this a vibrant place to be a student. Many factors go into making that decision, but race has not been the sole factor in deciding someone’s admissibility.
Miller: Not the sole factor, but it has been just one of many factors? Is that a fair way to put it?
Staab: That’s a fair way to put it, as was the consideration of how Harvard and University of North Carolina was doing their process, although they had a much more defined process in how race was being considered. Ultimately, given that the overwhelming majority of college universities admit a very high percentage of students, I think in the end this is really not gonna play as big of a role in how we’re doing the admissions process for students.
Miller: When you say “we”, do you mean you at Lewis & Clark, or higher education in the United States everywhere?
Staab: I think the overwhelming majority of schools are admitting well over 70% of the applicants who apply to the schools. And every one of us, I can pretty much guarantee you, the first criteria is “are these students academically qualified to come to our institutions?” I think that the overwhelming majority of us are not in that luxurious position that Harvard might be in where they’re only accepting 3% of their applicant pool. And they have to then also winnow down their applicant pool to find that very teeny tiny small amount of people that they feel that they want to have in their classroom. The overwhelming majority of us are more than excited to get applications and to enroll qualified applicants. I think it’s gonna be incredibly marginally different, there’s not gonna be a huge difference in how we’re making our admissions decisions for the overwhelming majority of colleges and universities overall across the United States, not just at Lewis & Clark.
Miller: That does with what I’ve seen over the last week or so from a number of experts and people who work at admissions in a variety of schools, that race conscious admissions made a big difference for a pretty small number of, in particular, Black and Latino students who were applying to a very small number of highly selective schools.
I’m still wondering if you’re saying that at Lewis & Clark, that race to some extent was a part of some decision making, what’s it going to mean for you to not be able to take race into account in that way anymore?
Staab: At Lewis & Clark College we are firmly committed to cultivating a diverse student body that includes individuals from a broad range of backgrounds and perspectives. And nothing about the Supreme Court really is going to change that. We are in the process of currently reviewing the ruling from the Supreme Court, and we are reviewing our admissions processes to ensure that we’re going to follow the law to the letter. But I don’t anticipate that we’re gonna need to make that big of a change.
I’m super encouraged by the remarks from Justice Roberts, who wrote in his majority opinion “nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” And so this really tells me that we do not need to be race ignorant in the review of applications for admission. If the applicant tells us in their application essay that being Hispanic from rural Oregon has impacted their life, my admissions team and I may feel like this is a perspective that we want in our classroom.
Ultimately, I think what the majority opinions on the Supreme Court want colleges to stop being influenced by is the box on the application for admission that tells us what the applicant’s race or ethnicity is.
Miller: Scott Vignos, can you help me understand the direction to the extent that admissions officers are gonna be taking that line from the Chief Justice and applying it in the meeting rooms. How do you imagine it might go? If the main point here is you’re not looking at a checked box for race or ethnicity because that’s no longer allowed, but you can read an applicant’s essay and hear and think about what they’ve written about their experience in life, the ways in which race or ethnicity have affected them. What would you then do with that information?
Vignos: Like Eric, I was heartened to read that last paragraph in Justice Roberts’ opinion. But it immediately started spinning out a whole bunch of questions for me around, practically, how do you do that? And I think it’s going to be a very fine line that admission officers are drawing between making a decision or having a contributing factor to an admission decision being based on an individual’s lived experience versus their race or ethnicity that they identify as part of the application. I think we’re gonna be working on this for a while. I’m trying to figure out what’s in and what’s out, and where we draw that fine line. Ultimately, I think there is the possibility that we may see additional cases that sort of challenge what exactly this means or are seeking clarity around what exactly that portion of the decision means.
I do think it raises a bigger question, which is that essentially the Supreme Court has said we’re talking about individual life experiences as opposed to addressing disparities in higher education from a structural level. So rather than considering the long term impacts of exclusionary policies on students of color, now we’re saying really it’s just about each individual’s experience that may or may not have been impacted by race. And so I expect we’ll see, for example, a lot more attention paid to the college essay, more guidance coming out from counselors about how to write those essays, and then a period of adjustment as admission officers, particularly at selective institutions, try to figure out what to make of this new landscape.
Miller: Well, Sabrina Sommer, this clearly is your turn to jump into this conversation. Do you imagine that advisors or counselors are going to be telling high school juniors and seniors to be thinking differently now about their essays?
Sabrina Sommer: Yes, I believe that that would probably come into play in this situation, given exactly what Scott was just talking about around the college essay and the ways that that will impact students, the story that they tell, and how they’re using their story to impact that admission decision. I do think that that could be something that we see come into play. I imagine also counselors will just rally and support students in all the ways that they can to continue to provide them with connections and opportunities with higher ed, so that they have that access and that knowledge of the higher education system in Oregon.
And it is very encouraging to hear both Eric and Scott talk about their positions as well, in terms of thinking about our students in David Douglas, who are 70% students of color.
Miller: In general, how many of your students over the years have been applying to the kinds of highly selective schools that have taken race into account? We’re talking about a very small subset of American higher education here.
Sommer: I would say that David Douglas school district is a pretty lower income, socioeconomically challenged community. We have, like I said, lots of students of color, a lot of immigrant students, a lot of English language learners. And our students are just so incredibly diverse and come from such incredibly diverse backgrounds that we probably don’t see too many that do apply to those selective universities. But we do see some, primarily in our Asian student population. We had at least a handful of graduates last year who are going to universities in California, to Stanford and USC and other higher level institutions. So we do see some of those students as well in our community. But it’s definitely a smaller percentage of our student population that even seeks to reach to that level.
Miller: What kinds of conversations do you imagine having in the fall among prospective college students, among your seniors, specifically as a result of this ruling?
Sommer: I think of my colleagues who are all still over at the counseling office at David Douglas High School and at our alternative school Fir Ridge, and I think that they are very devoted to our students and very devoted to helping our students reach the highest level that our students want to reach, providing them with the information that they need, with all of the tools and the resources they need. Our staff is very committed to helping our students reach the highest levels that they can.
I imagine, and I hope that the conversations around this are explicit. I think that talking about race is still something that is really hard for us. And in our school system in particular, we have been engaging in a lot of work around this as a district, from our district leaders all the way through every school building, we are having conversations about how race and other forms of marginality are impacting our students within our schools. And that has been going on for the last few years. We have a program specifically to help our students come back and work in our district, and get their teaching certificate with some financial support from our district, and come back and teach in our district as students of color.
So we definitely have this commitment to serve our students well, and to help them reach their goals and the places that they want to go in their lives. And I believe that that’s what our counseling office will continue to do, to continue to connect with higher ed officers like Scott and Eric and others around the state, and also some advocacy at the state level and within our own school system, because we know that the disparities begin in K-12. What we’re seeing in our K-12 system right now is that it’s very predictable by race who is going to thrive and succeed within our school system. And we are trying to change that in David Douglas School District, and work on that. So I do believe those conversations will be taking place, and hopefully at that level of authenticity and directness with students. I think students need that. They know they’re experiencing race, they’re experiencing this moment in very real ways as are their families. And I think that for white folks in particular in our schools, it’s a little more challenging to have that conversation directly.
I am a Latina immigrant, and was a counselor at the high school for a long time. And I prefer those direct conversations with students where we could talk about what’s hard about it, we could talk about what the challenges and barriers are, and then we can roll up our sleeves and talk about how we’re going to seek to overcome those barriers.
Miller: Scott, my understanding is that OSU does not consider race as part of the admissions process, but you have seen a 10% increase in students of color on your main campus in Corvallis over the last decade. What’s your strategy?
Vignos: Yeah, that’s correct. The proportion of students at OSU who identify as students of color has increased almost 75% since 2013. Students of color make up almost 30% of our student body at this time. And we don’t consider race or ethnicity as part of our admission process. We instead have a very direct access mission, as the land-grant in Oregon, we say we are committed to admitting every qualified student that applies. And that’s unlike more selective institutions where they have lots of qualified applications for one spot, and so they have to make these difficult decisions based on a variety of factors which, up until last week, may have included race and ethnicity.
Our strategy is really focused on a couple things. One is to build strong relationships with K-12 partners, with community-based organizations, with state agencies and other partners, to build what we call culturally responsive pathways to Oregon State. There’s an important piece here which is recognizing that not all communities are the same, and not all needs are the same. And oftentimes those contacts vary not only by communities, but by region. So programs like Juntos, which runs out of the OSU extension program, provide very culturally appropriate and responsive curriculum to students and their families that talk about the promise of higher education, that talk about what it takes to go to college, and to be successful as a student. That has been a major focus of ours.
I think another piece here is focused on affordability. And so as much as race and ethnicity can be a contributing factor to a student’s likelihood of admission, so too is the affordability of that college education. And we know that while income inequality is increasing, the cost of tuition is also increasing. So we’re working really hard to make sure that college is affordable for students, and that they’re not leaving college with a significant amount of debt. A focus on this kind of topic, the benefit of that flows not only to students of color, but to other students that have historically faced barriers to accessing higher education, students from rural communities, veterans, adult learners, and others.
So we think there’s a lot of benefit to be gained by building those very strong pathways to higher education that let students know that they belong, and that they can thrive, and that they’ll be supported once they arrive at Oregon State, but then also focusing on essentially how do we ensure that students can sustainably remain and be retained at Oregon State so that they can graduate and go on to successful careers.
Miller: Eric Staab, this ruling is really very specifically focused on admissions decisions, saying you cannot take race into account when you’re making these decisions. But could it have a broader impact on other aspects of colleges or universities?
Staab: That is really an excellent question, and you are spot on and clarifying that this is really a ruling from the Supreme Court about using race as just one of the many variables that admissions offices used in our process of making admissions decisions. It has nothing to do with how we recruit or where we recruit. It has nothing to do with how we hire people. It has nothing to do with how we provide support services for historically underrepresented students on our campuses. This is squarely on the question of whether or not an admissions office can look at the checked box and say “this is a Hispanic student and therefore I wish to admit the student because they checked that box.”
Miller: But do you think that it could lead schools to change any of those other practices that you just outlined as a kind of over generalization of the principle from this very particular ruling?
Staab: This is really the big question and a big concern that I have, the interpretive overreach that some may find as an opportunity to either find an excuse to not provide those kind of support services, or to be overly cautious in how we interpret certain regulations, and therefore stop providing either support or doing initiatives to help us to accomplish our goals of providing a richly diverse experience for our enrolled students. So yes, absolutely, this has the potential. And I’m hopeful that colleges will be cautious not to be overinterpreting this decision.
Miller: Sabrina, what advice would you give directly to young students today?
Sommer: I would just say work really hard at school. Find people who can support you in that work. Find mentors. If you don’t have teachers who look like you, go out into the community and find those folks and hear different perspectives and learn from different kinds of people. And access your school counselors, your teachers who you have connections with, anybody who will support you in moving forward with your goals and helping you reach that goal of going to college wherever you may want to go. Surround yourself with people who can support that work. I think that’s really what it comes down to: stay in the game, because the tides turn all the time, and there are always people who are willing to help. There are always people who are gonna show up on your side and go to bat for you. Stay in the game, and work hard.
Miller: Sabrina, Eric, and Scott, thanks very much.
All: Thank you.
Miller: Sabrina Sommer is the equity specialist for the David Douglas School District. Scott Vignos is the vice president and chief diversity officer at Oregon State University. And Eric Staab is the vice president of admissions and financial aid at Lewis & Clark.
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