Photo courtesy of Ted Eytan via DU Clarion. The Supreme Court will hear a case that could determine the future of affirmative action policies.
Cydney Socias ’25
Staff Writer
The way Mount Holyoke College and other colleges across the country implement policies toward diverse enrollment could experience a large shift at the hands of current Supreme Court cases. On Monday, Oct. 31, the Supreme Court heard two cases both raised by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as listed on the Supreme Court calendar. SFFA has argued that the current affirmative action policy is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, as reported by The New York Times. In this analysis, The New York Times reports that Patrick Strawbridge, the lawyer arguing on behalf of SFFA, claims that affirmative action leads to racial classification which is explicitly unconstitutional. Harvard and UNC Chapel Hill both refute this, finding that affirmative action ensures racial equity on their campuses.
In a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court, it is most likely that the current affirmative action precedent Grutter v. Bolinger will be overturned, as analyzed by The New York Times reporter Adam Liptak. Legal scholars Wendy Leo Moore and Joyce M. Bell in “Maneuvers of Whiteness: ‘Diversity’ as a Mechanism of Retrenchment in the Affirmative Action Discourse,” explain that Grutter calls for race-conscious admissions as part of a holistic application review. This case stated that a diverse campus benefits all students. Moore and Bell’s analysis points out that the Grutter case orientates diversity as beneficial to white students and “the legal focus of affirmative action is now most often on the protection of the innocent white, and the innocent white dominates the narrative about creating racial equity.”
In last week’s hearings, justices on both sides of the political spectrum had to construct their perspectives around the precedent set by Grutter. Conservative Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated that “Grutter doesn’t say, ‘This is great, we embrace this.’ Grutter says, ‘This is dangerous, and it has to have an endpoint,’” The New York Times reported. The liberal argument is that America has not made sufficient progress against racism to justify the end of affirmative action. According to The Guardian, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stated, “What I’m worried about is that the rule that you’re advocating, that in the context of a holistic review process, the university can take into account and value all of the other background and personal characteristics of other applicants, but they can’t value race. … That seems to me to have the potential of causing more of an equal protection problem than it’s actually solving.”
In light of the case involving Harvard, the editorial staff of The Harvard Crimson wrote that “nothing will fill the vacuum left behind by the collapse of race-conscious admissions, but that’s no excuse for policy-void resignation; our institution cannot allow its next chapter to be written in monochromatic ink. The collapse of affirmative action must be met with righteous anger and a renewed commitment to diversity — not with an empty, subdued shrug.”
Regarding institutional commitments, Mount Holyoke has pledged to increase on-campus diversity and make movements toward equity. The most explicit of such was outlined in the College's 2020 Anti-Racism Action Plan, published on August 27, 2020. The College’s anti-racism plan states: “Mount Holyoke must be persistent and uncompromising. … We must identify and address all forms of implicit and explicit racism, bias and discrimination on our campus. And we must do the work … to better support our BIPOC students, faculty and staff, and to ensure that this is a just, safe and welcoming community.”
Under the enrollment section of the plan, the College refers to the creation of an Admissions Diversity Working Group with the goal of “building anti-racist strategies to increase the enrollment of BIPOC students at the College.” They also note partnerships with organizations American Talent Initiative, College Greenlight and College Horizons — all with the purpose of increasing BIPOC access to institutions of higher education. The College’s Strategic Plan for 2023 also references supporting diversity policy and procedure as its third strategic priority, according to the College website. Differing from the 2020 Anti-Racism Action Plan, the Strategic Plan focuses more on facilitating diversity on campus rather than creating equitable opportunities that would increase diversity.
Interim President Beverly Daniel Tatum upholds these commitments, responding to Mount Holyoke News inquiry by stating, “The College is working to become an anti-racist community as outlined in the Anti-Racism Action Plan. Additionally, Mount Holyoke joined 32 colleges and universities in August 2022 in signing an amicus brief that supported upholding Grutter v. Bollinger. We remain committed to investing in the programs and partnerships that introduce prospective students of color to Mount Holyoke, such as American Talent Institution, College Greenlight and College Horizons. Regardless of the outcome of the Supreme Court decision, Mount Holyoke is committed to enrolling a student body that reflects our nation’s diversity and which opens doors to traditionally excluded groups.”
According to the MHC Factbook, approximately 27 percent of Mount Holyoke’s domestic students were students of color during 2020-2021. In the current academic year, that number has dropped to 24 percent. The College’s recent implementation of diversity, presented in these institutional documents, suggests a commitment and movement toward increasing diverse enrollment. While this decrease is not addressed in the 2023 Strategic Plan, Vice President for Enrollment Management Robin Randall, noted the COVID-19 pandemic as explanation. She stated, “We did have higher success in enrollment of students of color in Fall 2020 as a result of pre-pandemic initiatives. It is notable that the first year cohort entering in Fall 2020 included the last group of enrolled students who had the opportunity to attend our on-campus programming before choosing to apply to the College. Incoming students of color were retained in the Fall 2020 class at a higher rate as we experienced a large deferral of enrollment. 20 percent of the class deferred to start in the spring or following fall semester.”
Randall also addressed an institutional goal of rectifying this decrease, “Our current recruitment program continues to invest in best practices to overcome this dip in enrollment among students of color. This includes increased use of census and other publicly available data to expand our investment in outreach and strategic travel planning to reach prospective students of color. We also continue to grow our counselor and community based-organization database and relationships in areas that serve students of color. We have seen growth in the number of prospective students of color we are reaching and expect that pipeline to result in application increases as well.” She continued, “We are pleased to be rebuilding our own staff capacity after experiencing high turnover post-pandemic with a group of recent hires, including an associate director for access and inclusion. We also know that connecting prospective students of color with the campus community is really important in growing the applicant pool and increasing the yield of admitted students. These connections can be forged here on campus during visits, through virtual programs, peer-to-peer platforms and invitations to join virtual events that are open to the entire Mount Holyoke community.”
Currently, it’s unforeseeable how current affirmative action cases and their decisions will affect the College’s commitments. Liptak provided his analysis, stating, “One question will be what tools [American higher education institutions] will be left with to achieve racial diversity if the court says they can’t take account of race directly. Will they still be allowed to take account of race indirectly through proxies? … The legal logic of a decision doing away with affirmative action in higher education could easily have an impact in other parts of society, in employment, in the military and other areas.”
With the MHC Factbook already revealing a percentile decrease in students of color enrollment since 2020, the College will need to develop new strategies for increasing diversity depending on the limitations rulings in SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill could impose.
Randall responded to this saying, “Until the decision is rendered, we will maintain our practices within the current legal framework. Mount Holyoke’s current admission process mirrors that of leading colleges and universities in considering a wide variety of factors in making admission decisions. [Including] academic record, life experience, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status and background,” Randall continued. “Regardless of the outcome of the Supreme Court decision, Mount Holyoke is committed to enrolling a student body that reflects our nation’s diversity and which opens doors to traditionally excluded groups. We will continue to work locally, regionally and nationally with our peers and professional associations to identify a new set of best practices that align with any changes required by the Supreme Court decisions.”