Western Pa. campuses vow to stay diverse amid Supreme Court's mulling of race-based admissions

If the U.S. Supreme Court prohibits universities from considering race in admissions, overturning four decades of legal precedent, campuses in Western Pennsylvania and across the country say they’ll still look for ways to make their enrollments diverse.

“It will definitely have an effect on schools,” said Ann Schiavone, an associate law professor at Duquesne University who teaches constitutional law. “Poor admissions teams are going to have to try to figure it out.”

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, heard arguments this week in cases challenging the consideration of race in admissions decisions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. A ruling is not expected until next year.

Socioeconomic factors, extracurricular activities and other distinctions long helped schools build diverse campuses and could take on added importance as proxies for race, Schiavone said.

“We use geography,” Schiavone, said. “But it’s not as a proxy for race. When we get students from Washington state or California or Florida, that’s great because that’s a different perspective, a different world view.”

Several area universities contacted about the cases this week offered little or no comment.

The University of Pittsburgh offered a statement from an unnamed spokesperson.

“The University of Pittsburgh believes that diversity enriches the learning experience for all. Pitt will continue to invest in increasing representation and supporting historically underrepresented and marginalized groups in our student body,” the statement read.

Carnegie Mellon University, Penn State University and the State System of Higher Education declined to comment.

The American Council on Education, an umbrella group for higher education, said the matters at stake transcend how the two elite institutions — Harvard and North Carolina — approach race in admissions policy.

In a brief filed on behalf of itself and 39 other higher education organizations, the council said schools should have “institutional autonomy and academic freedom.”

“This includes information and perspectives offered by applicants who believe their racial or ethnic identity plays a role in their life experiences, leadership skills or potential campus contribution,” the Washington, D.C.-based council wrote.

A ban on considering race in admissions decisions would leave students of color to either refrain from speaking about their ethnicity or race or they could do so and have those factors ignored.

“Students discussing socioeconomic status, gender, age, disability or experiences as veterans, musicians or first-generation learners all could speak freely,” the council brief said. “(A ban on considering race in admissions decisions) would create a unique, distinct disadvantaging of racial and ethnic minorities and impose unique and impermissible content restrictions on expressive activity.”

The cases against Harvard, the nation’s oldest private college, and North Carolina, the nation’s oldest public institution, were filed in 2014 by Students for Fair Admissions, which asserted both schools were “engaged in unfair, polarizing, and illegal racial discrimination in their admissions policies.”

Edward Blum, president of the Arlington, Va.-based Students for Fair Admissions, was not available for comment.

His 20,000-member organization, including students and parents, said on its website that “racial classifications and preferences in college admissions are unfair, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.”

“No one is under any illusions that we live in a post-racial society, or that racial discrimination is a thing of the past,” the group said in a statement. “But when our most elite universities place high-schoolers on racial registers and tell the world that their skin color affects what they think and know, what they like and don’t like, they are hurting, not helping.”

Currently, nine states prohibit public colleges and universities from considering race in admissions decisions: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington.

West Virginia University does not use race in admissions, said George Zimmerman, the university’s assistant vice president of enrollment management. Students who meet academic requirements are admitted, he said.

For WVU, the issue is more of how to recruit minorities to a largely white state. Zimmerman said he believes schools can achieve diversity without using race explicitly and that they may shift toward other factors as WVU does.

“When we look at diversity, we’re thinking about first-generation college students. We’re thinking about Pell-eligible, low-income students. We’re thinking about women in (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields,” Zimmerman said.

In recent decades, the use of race in admissions decisions has weathered multiple Supreme Court challenges – the latest six years ago. In a 2003 case called Grutter v. Bollinger, an applicant to the University of Michigan’s Law School sued, alleging she was denied admission because the school favored minority groups. The Supreme Court ruled in that case that race could be used among other factors in admissions decisions.

“I thought Grutter was a pretty solid compromise, letting schools of higher education take race into account without making it the full test,” Schiavone said.

When asked if the current case before the court could prove to be the undoing of affirmative action in admissions decisions, Schiavone said, “I do. I really do.”

In recent years, the composition of the Supreme Court has swung to the right. Three justices were added to the high court under former President Donald Trump, a Republican. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, who became the court’s first Black woman after her confirmation.

A Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted Oct. 7-10 found that 63% of U.S. adults surveyed said they would support the Supreme Court banning colleges and universities from considering race and ethnicity in admissions decisions. However, the same survey also found that 64% of those surveyed favored programs that support diversity on college campuses.

Some observers said they could not have imagined a scenario in which decades-old affirmative action gains could be reversed by the nation’s high court.

“No — that’s the short answer,” said Ron Cowell, president of the Camp Hill, Pa.-based Education Policy and Leadership Center and a former state legislator.

Decades ago, when it affirmed the notion of affirmative action, the Supreme Court “had a very different composition and a different inclination institutionally,” Cowell said. “That surely has changed.”