Eva Week 8- Affirmative Action in the Supreme Court

Recently, the Supreme Court had two court hearings about Harvard University and the University of North Carolina on whether Affirmative Action should be allowed by colleges in the admission process. Affirmative Action has to do with whether race should be considered as a factor in college applications mainly by checking off a box to determine what race students are. It is meant to eliminate discrimination against applicants and create a workforce that reflects the demographics of the United States accurately.

Specifically for the case against Harvard, the prosecution was arguing that Affirmative Action discriminates against Asian students, students should not be able to get in college solely based on their race or be evaluated based on race, and that there are other non-racial options for promoting diversity in the admissions process. Of course, their argument was more nuanced than this, but I feel these elements are what it boiled down to. Another important topic that kept being brought up was what diversity means for a college and the fact that these race conscious procedures were meant to be eliminated twenty five years after their installment. 

The defense explained that the knowledge of a student's race in the admission process is one of countless factors considered in a college application, and all types of students should be properly represented in higher education. They also showed studies and research that proved that the options for race neutral alternatives (considering other factors other than race to create a diverse student body) are currently insufficient and would lower the amount of diversity of races present, especially the amount of black students. In addition, they showed an example of a school that does not use Affirmative Action, UCLA, and how their diversity has lowered and students feel underrepresented as a result. To respond to the point that the installment of Affirmative Action was meant to be eliminated after twenty five years, they explained that their hope was it wouldn’t be needed in twenty five years because the student body would be naturally diverse without it. This is unfortunately not the case, but their hope is that it will still happen in the near future. Until then, they feel they need to take race into account in the application process.