Students weigh in on the latest challenge to affirmative action

Halloween was far from the minds of many high school students when the Supreme Court heard the first oral arguments for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. University of North Carolina (UNC) on October 31, 2022. SFFA initially filed this case in 2014, questioning the consideration of race in UNC’s college admissions process. 

An October 2021 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Loretta C. Biggs upheld UNC’s policies, referencing Supreme Court precedents that affirmed the legality of affirmative action, a policy that increases opportunities for historically marginalized individuals. Patrick Strawbridge, an SFFA attorney, began the hearing on the 31st by also referencing precedents. He recalled legal condemnations of racial classifications after the Civil War, including the Court’s ruling of such classifications as unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.

However, Strawbridge noted, the Court’s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger provided an exception as the first case that allowed for race-conscious college admissions, which Strawbridge stated are “racial classifications [that contradict] the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal treatment.”

This guarantee, commonly known as the Equal Protection Clause, protects citizens from discrimination by government action or the law unless the Court accepts a rational basis as justification. Students across America had many opinions on how justified affirmative action is.

Texas teenager Jeremy Tu supports affirmative action because it allows for diversity in elite institutions that “end up funneling people into the most powerful positions in our country,” which are positions he believes should “reflect the people in America.”

Tu, a first-generation, low-income Asian American himself, cited studies that disproved the common belief that Asian Americans are disadvantaged by affirmative action. However, he pointed out that Asian Americans are impacted by implicit bias, as universities like Harvard rated Asian Americans low on “positive personality” traits like courage and kindness.

Tu was also concerned Asian Americans are being exploited in debates over affirmative action because the SFFA founder, Edward Blum, is a white legal strategist renowned for advocating against affirmative action. Tu commented: “Like, with the model minority myth, Asians are typically held as a weapon against black and brown people…I’m tired of white people using us as a weapon against other minority groups when we should be allied against systems of oppression like white supremacy. Obviously, maybe [Edward Bloom] is the most qualified, but it’s just the messaging. I’m tired of seeing that.”

Shivani Itzel Gutierrez, a Mexican student from Indiana, also disagrees with SFFA’s messaging, specifically how they represent the role of race in admissions. Gutierrez believes that “admissions are holistic. You don’t get into a college because of your skin color. It’s going to deserving students.”

Nonetheless, the consideration of race is still valid in Gutierrez’s eyes because “along with your race comes so much culture, comes such a different way of thinking, such different experiences. If colleges want to be better, they need to provide an array of experiences and backgrounds.”

Gutierrez is more concerned with considering legacy in college admissions, arguing that the stronger consideration of students with alum connections is unfair. Jade Amaya, a Salvadoran-American student from California, shares Gutierrez’s disagreement with legacy consideration and belief that admissions are holistic. However, Amaya is not wholly sure how “fair” affirmative action is.

Referencing the decrease in diversity at Berkeley after they removed affirmative action from college admissions, Amaya solidified her support for using race-conscious admissions to increase diversity. On the other hand, she still “[sees] both sides of the argument” because “the predominant group that really gets hurt from [affirmative action] are Asian Americans” due to the way institutions like Harvard rank them.

Amaya hopes that expanding college preparatory resources, such as community-based organizations, for historically marginalized groups will reduce the need for affirmative action. Other students have expanded on this to share their view of affirmative action as temporary, expressing how it is “supposed to work toward its own obsolescence” as diversifying the pool of accepted applicants becomes the norm in college admissions.

Nevertheless, Tu, Gutierrez, and Amaya all believe that the Supreme Court will overturn previous cases that have upheld affirmative action and rule in favor of SFFA.

Written by Obse Abebe of Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School

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