Mayra Parrilla Guerrero
THE CHARLOTTE POST
Anastasia Bradley-Sullivan dreams of a career as a dental hygienist.
Bradley-Sullivan, who will start her senior year at West Charlotte High School this month, researched colleges to find the best options and narrowed her choices to Clemson University and North Carolina State University. However, the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to prohibit colleges from taking race into consideration for admissions might become a challenge.
“I feel like it’s just a little unfair because while test scores and I guess environment plays a factor, certain races have certain disadvantages based on the community or upbringing they’re in,” Bradley-Sullivan, 16, said.
The court’s 6-3 decision, which declared initiatives at UNC-Chapel Hill and Harvard University unconstitutional based on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, sparked controversy among students and lawmakers. Supporters hail the decision as a win for merit-based equality. Opponents are concerned it will limit access to some of the nation’s most selective – and by extension, exclusive – colleges.
“I was mad as hell, and I still am,” said U.S. Rep. Alma Adams of Charlotte and founder of the Bipartisan HBCU Caucus, which advocates for. “The ruling came the same week as the Supreme Court’s decision in the student loan forgiveness case, and taken together, the two rulings seemed to indicate that the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the law was out of touch with the realities American students face, especially Black students and minority students.”
Bradley-Sullivan, like other affirmative action proponents, said the decision did not take into consideration the disadvantages minorities face in their communities.
According to a study conducted by the University of South Carolina “a 2018 report revealed school districts enrolling “the most students of color receive about $1,800, or 13%, less per student” than districts serving the fewest students of color.”
Affirmative action proponents believe disadvantages within the public school system, which enroll most students of color, should be why race should be taken into consideration.
“West Charlotte is extremely underfunded, and we don’t have the same opportunities,” Bradley-Sullivan said. “I don’t want to be rude, but white people at Myers Park [High School] have 200 kids in one [International Baccalaureate] class, and we have like 15. I feel like [race] should be a factor because race really affects your environment for the most part, because I don’t have the same resources and opportunities.”
Charlotte colleges, like their peers across the country, are trying to strike a balance between the law and enrollment diversity.
“It’s important to understand that race is not an explicit factor in making admissions decisions at Queens University of Charlotte,” said Adrienne Amador Oddi, the school’s vice president of strategic enrollment and communications. “It is also important to know that eliminating a check mark does not eliminate race as an element of identity. Our racial identities are a part of each of us. Walking around campus, you see a vibrant and robust tapestry of people with unique identities, each telling a distinct story.”
Oddi told The Post Queens does not explicitly use race as a factor in making admissions decisions. In considering applicants, Oddi said the university focuses on several factors.
“We’re looking at the types of classes students are taking, how they’re doing in those classes, what they’re involved in, whether it’s, working in jobs, taking care of family members, participating in clubs or sports or musical ensembles,” she said.
“It’s really important for us that students are connected and engaged in the classroom because our classrooms here at Queens are dynamic, active, participatory experiences.”
Oddi said Queens does consider the school a prospective student comes from – for instance, whether it is underfunded and/or underperforming.
For historically Black colleges and universities, the story is different.
They’re preparing for an anticipated spike in high school seniors considering their campuses among potential landing spots.
“I never was really looking at HBCUs, but after [the end of affirmative action] I was like, ‘Let me let me look,’” said Bradley Sullivan, who admits to not thinking about HBCUs previously and is still determined to apply to the schools on her original list.
However, Bradley-Sullivan expressed that applying to HBCUs can be competitive now that more students may have the same plan.
“I don’t know if I’m going to have that much competition,” she said, “but then again, it’s like you got to think everybody’s going to be applying to HBCUs now for the most part, and that’s going to be a little bit overwhelming for them.”
The concern among HBCU proponents is whether those campuses – which are historically underfunded by government and philanthropy networks – are prepared to handle a surge of admissions from students who believe they no longer have a shot at highly selective, mostly white schools.
“Engaging with my own colleagues across the field. I think many of us have been preparing for the what if,” said Davida Haywood, vice president of student affairs at Johnson C. Smith University. “But I would also like to argue that our institutions have been prepared since their conception in 1837. I think we have to be reminded that HBCUs grew out of this sense of need because higher education in its form, then we were told, was not for us.
“I think it’s going to be an incredible challenge, particularly as HBCUs really step up their narratives about why it’s important to, at this point, just come home.”
To ensure funding, Haywood said JCSU plans to connect with potential donors who see the school’s value to provide students with resources.
With enrollment expected to increase, tuition may as well; however, Haywood said there has been no decision whether JCSU will do so.
“I don’t ever want to say never, but we are really cognizant about the cost of our institution and what you charge room for matriculation fees,” she said. “All of that provides for our students. So even before proposing to raise tuition, we do a lot of conversing. “There’s a lot of deep discussion around what does that mean because at the end of the day, we do want to remain an affordable option for students who are looking for, an environment where they can be nurtured, empowered, engaged and transformed.”
If there is a silver lining to the court’s ruling, Black college advocates believe there’ll be an increase of enrollment and interest in HBCUs.
“I think HBCUs and [minority serving institutions] are prepared for this moment,” said Adams, who earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from North Carolina A&T State University, an HBCU in Greensboro. “For the past couple of years, we’ve seen increased attention given to HBCUs and historic levels of philanthropic donations and government funding. This Supreme Court decision is a reason for those donors to sustain their gifts – HBCUs aren’t going away any time soon. It also adds urgency to our HBCU agenda in Congress, including the passage of legislation to improve, preserve, and create 21st century infrastructure on HBCU and MSI campuses.”
Adams, a retired professor who taught at Bennett College, an HBCU for women in Greensboro, cautions affirmative action proponents that a legislative reversal of the Supreme Court’s decision won’t happen in the 118th Congress. In the meantime, the potential bump of HBCU admissions silver will be limited without corresponding support.
“I think the decision does much more harm than good,” she said, “and it won’t be a silver lining for HBCUs unless we continue to support them and equip them with the infrastructure and resources they need to serve any increase in enrollment. Attention must be paid to those issues.”
Another issue students have been vocal about is how selective college campuses will look like if more students of color turn to HBCUs.
Jurnee Caldwell, 17, a West Charlotte student whose goal is to earn a degree in criminal law, said the elimination of affirmative action puts risks campus diversity.
“I feel like [eliminating affirmative action] would bring less diversity to campuses,” she said. “With everybody tending to stay in more the areas that they are comfortable with diversity in it. I feel like it just allows for less perspectives to be seen and for views to not be so much as heard.”
Like Bradley-Sullivan, Caldwell is now thinking of attending an HBCU after not being initially interested in them. A lack of campus resources was one of the reasons why she did not think about them before. Now she is concerned about attending a school that lacks diversity.
There’s no data yet of how affirmative action will affect campus diversity; however, before the Supreme Court’s decision, public colleges in nine states banned it more than 25 years ago.
A 2020 study by the American Educational Research Association that examined 19 public universities in states that banned affirmative action starting in the mid-1990s found that the number of Black, Hispanic, and Native American students enrolled at nine flagship universities in the study was 11.2 percentage points less than the share of high school graduates from those groups in states where those schools are located. The gulf grew 13.9 percentage points after the affirmative action ban and to 14.3 percentage points by 2015.
The report also included how some universities announced they would automatically accept the top 10% of high school graduating classes to maintain racial diversity.
The University of South Carolina last week announced a plan to automatically accept students who are ranked 10% of their high school graduating class starting in fall 2024.
Queens is putting plans in place, too.
“Making sure we’re creating a welcome and inclusive community is everybody’s job” said Oddi, the strategic enrollment chief. “We just recently set out a strategic plan and all of our [diversity, equity and inclusion] efforts funnel up through the president’s office because it’s really important to him that we were being really clear that our DEI efforts don’t fall in one particular arm of the university, but should be permeating the entire university.”
