The Supreme Court announced it will hear a case on affirmative action, potentially changing admission policies that for decades have largely been the norm for colleges and universities across the country.
“Affirmative action is important to diversity education,” Scott Tharp, associate director for the Office of Diversity Education, said. “It ensures that institutions have diverse communities, which has been shown to facilitate a measurable improvement in student learning and cultural engagement.”
DePaul University states that it is an “equal opportunity and affirmative action employer,” as well as having a race-conscious admissions process, typical of the majority of U.S. college institutions. DePaul reports that minority students currently make up 35 percent of undergraduate and 25 percent of graduate enrollment. Nine percent of students choose not to report their race or ethnicity to the university.
Controversy over affirmative action came to DePaul in 2006, when DePaul’s Conservative Alliance’s (DCA) affirmative action bake sale was prematurely shut down by the university. The organization was charging higher prices for Asian and Caucasian students while offering minority students baked goods at lower prices, a protest against affirmative action policies for college admissions practiced previously by other college institutions.
A debate about affirmative action reportedly ensued between passersby and DCA members before university officials shut down the DCA’s booth.
According to Suzanne Kilgannon, director of the Office of Student Involvement at DePaul, the bake sale “was shut down because they had not completed appropriate paperwork properly.”
The controversy that followed was misconstrued, although its aftermath had some positive effects on the conversation of race and admissions, she said.
Kilgannon reiterated that the university’s primary responsibility is the safety and education of its students. “If it impinges on the business of the university and inhibits the ability of our students to learn, such as blocking the fire exit or standing up and yelling in class, it often is perceived to be unfair restrictions on freedom of speech, which honestly we don’t have.”
“I think what ended up happening after that is it forced the DePaul community to have a conversation about the tensions that are around free expression,” Kilgannon said. “It is hard when you don’t help frame it, help context for it, frame the issues maybe even articulate them constructively.”
“Part of what positive came from that is a shift in the perspective of the university to really embrace all the messiness that comes with these debates.”
DePaul University was founded in 1898 by the Vincentians, a Catholic order that advocated for philanthropy and access to education for all groups, regardless of ethnicity or race. In 2006, DePaul was ranked as number one for student diversity in the country by the Princeton Review.
“Affirmative action is not explicitly part of the conversation, but as a mission based institution we try to reach out to low income and disadvantaged students as part of our access for everyone to higher education,” Alfano said.
The Supreme Court is expected to take up the new case, Fisher v. The University of Texas, No. 11-345, sometime later this year, likely when the 2012 presidential campaign is in full swing. Abigail Fisher, a white student who was denied admission to the University of Texas, sued the school on the grounds that she was rejected because of her race.
The decision to review the case surprised many as it is followed on the heels of a 2003 ruling, Grutter v. Bollinger, in which affirmative action admissions at the University of Michigan Law School were upheld in a 5-4 decision. Now retired Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, writing for the majority opinion, cited that although affirmative action policies may favor “underrepresented minority groups,” it did not constitute a quota system considering the individual factors taken into account on college admission applications.
The Supreme Court ruled racial admission quotas unconstitutional in its 1978 decision, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, although several justices cited that race could be considered a factor in the interest of student diversity. In the decades that followed, the decision has largely guided affirmative action admission policies for U.S. universities.
“The popular narrative about affirmative action is that it means quotas and numbers based on identity, not on skill,” Tharp said. “This is not at its heart, which is about conscious efforts to ensure equity in policy and practice in terms of hiring and admissions.”
With Justice O’Conner’s departure from the Supreme Court in 2005 and the appointment of conservative Justice Samuel Alito under the Bush administration, affirmative action critics have waited for a chance at challenging what they view as unconstitutional discrimination.
Supporters of race-conscious admissions contend that affirmative action policies are essential for providing the opportunity for disadvantaged and underrepresented minority groups to attend college.
If affirmative action is overturned by the Supreme Court, DePaul might be required to comply with the ruling, including the possibility of race-blind admissions.
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who worked on the case briefly as U.S. Solicitor General for the Obama administration before being appointed as Justice, will not take part in the hearing due to the conflict of interest. This could affect the outcome of a tightly divided Court, as she has supported affirmative action policies in the past.
“Many point and generalize singular experiences as accepted truths, such as the idea that because we have a black president, racism is no longer an issue, or that Nancy Pelosi’s election to Speaker of the House marks the end of sexism as an issue in politics,” Tharp said. “This is simply not the case.”