On Wednesday night the Office of the President sponsored “The Fate and Future of Affirmative Action,” a student and faculty forum designed to discuss the meaning of affirmative action and the role it plays at Oberlin College. The forum was partially initiated in response to two Supreme Court cases involving the University of Michigan, in which the court will soon rule to determine the constitutionality of affirmative action.
Administrative speakers included College President Nancy Dye, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Clayton Koppes, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Debra Chermonte and faculty panelists from the Departments of Mathematics, History, Politics, and Religion.
President Dye opened the forum, describing affirmative action as “a set of practices and polices that Oberlin College has long endorsed and long engaged in.”
Following Dye’s remarks, Ron Kahn, a member of the politics department and a specialist in constitutional law, explained some of the legal precedents behind affirmative action policies.
The 14th Amendment “equal protection clause,” which offers equal protection under the law to all American citizens, is the origin of affirmative action and is at the core of the debate regarding its constitutionality. Also important to the affirmative action debate is the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
Panelists described the affirmative action debate as a conflict between perceptions of higher education, arguing that opposition to affirmative action establishes higher education as a private good. Oberlin’s pro-affirmative action stance means that the college “has said, and will continue to say, that higher education is a public good.”
After an establishment of the meaning of affirmative action and Oberlin College’s affirmative action policy, the particulars of the upcoming Supreme Court case, which occasioned the forum, were discussed. Debra Chermonte described the case as “a decision that could affect academic freedom here at Oberlin and the future of Oberlin’s alumni.”
Sixty briefs were submitted to the Supreme Court in favor of race-conscious admissions, including one by Oberlin and a consortium of selective liberal arts colleges. Other parties filing pro-affirmative action briefs included the governor of Michigan, members of Congress, and twenty-two state attorney generals. The case will be heard on April 1, and a decision should be reached in June or July.
Justices Ginsberg, Breyer, O’Connor, Reinquest, Steve and Kennedy have all acknowledged the existence of race as a factor; Justices Scalia and Thomas believe that the constitution should be “color-blind.”
Panelists varied in their predictions of the Supreme Court’s decision. Dean Koppes reported that the solicitor general’s briefing did not describe affirmative action as wrong, but only the process of establishing “quotas” for diversity, and predicted that the Supreme Court will rule the University of Michigan’s quota policy unconstitutional.
Other academic affirmative action policies, including minority-oriented scholarships like the Mellon program, which funds PhDs for African-American and Latino applicants, would be unaffected by the decision.
Gary Kornblith, an Oberlin American History professor, predicted that, “the Supreme Court will try to split the difference,” saying that the University of Michigan law school program is constitutional but the undergraduate program is not.
“Any racial privilege is the same as the white privilege of the ’60s,” Kornblith stressed, adding that “Mellon may have new challenges.”
This legal discussion was followed by an examination of how affirmative action applies to admissions at Oberlin College. Every student is admitted to Oberlin with the confidence that he or she will be able to succeed and bring something to the college, panelists mentioned. Chermonte then described the application review process and initiated a discussion of the role of ethnicity and socioeconomic background in Oberlin admissions.
Every student application is sorted regionally and read by two to three admissions staff members, Chermonte explained. After an application is read, its first reader presents it to the Admissions Committee, acting as its advocate. Factors affecting admission include the school the applicant attended, the rigor of her course load, and how much the applicant challenged herself within the bounds offered by her high school.
Race enters into the admissions process only indirectly, said Chermonte.
“[While] we are aware of the backgrounds, the race question is optional,” she said. “There are many different factors that surround a student’s background. We have an amazing breadth to our applicant pool.”
Chermonte noted that application readers often look for “feeder schools,” schools that send large amounts of students to Oberlin. Chermonte stressed, however, that note was made of those schools largely “for Oberlin’s benefit,” and that “the school’s name is not a guarantee.”
Panelists noted that colleges like Oberlin compete for a small pool of African-American and Hispanic students, and that more work needs to be done to expand a qualified minority applicant pool. The school also aims for diversity among the Caucasian community, admitting students from varying socioeconomic backgrounds and from both private and public schools.