(DailyVantage.com) – After the historic Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision finding affirmative action unconstitutional, the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill announced that it would be offering free tuition to undergraduate students whose families earn less than $80,000 starting this fall.
UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz stated that “race will not be a factor in admissions decisions at the university… We will comply with the Court’s ruling. An applicant’s lived racial experience cannot be credited as ‘race for race’s sake.”
This allows UNC to still consider race, but only as it relates to someone’s life experiences, in the admission processes; however, while this may be viewed as a sneaky way to bypass the court, the court outlined the potential for this within its ruling.
In Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the SCOTUS ruled 6-2, with Chief Justice John Roberts holding that affirmative action in the college admissions process is unconstitutional. This decision was based upon the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment, which the court found affirmative action to violate.
While conservatives have been quick to praise the recent ruling, progressives have countered with a critique of the continuation of university policy on legacy admissions, which gives preferential treatment based on being an alumni applicant.
Among the critics was President Biden, who, despite his stance on legacy admissions, used his connections at Ivy League schools to get his granddaughter, Maisy Biden, into the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), a university known for its selective 5.87% acceptance rate.
Joe Biden admitted to conversing with Penn President Gutmann to get Maisy Biden accepted, and the strategy worked. Maisy Biden was accepted into Penn starting in the fall of 2019.
Biden would even later nominate Gutmann as the United States ambassador to Germany. This shows the continuing level of influence that education institutions have on politics and how the impacts of affirmative action and legacy admissions will continue to remain in public discourse.
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