Affirmative Action No Longer: The Need for Higher Education to Adjust

Over the summer, the supreme court overturned affirmative action, a collection of policies meant to give historically disadvantaged groups greater opportunities. It was best known for its application in higher education admissions.  

The New York Times published an article this week comparing this year’s proportion of Black first-year students to that of last year at Harvard University in Massachusetts.  

There, the percentage of Black first-year students has fallen to 14 percent, down from 18 percent last year. Also noted was that the percentage of Hispanic first year students went up from 14 percent to 16 percent and the percentage of Asian Americans remained the same at 37 percent.  

At St. Lawrence University, we don’t have access to the current proportion of students identifying with any of those groups. However, we can report that last year 2.1 percent of overall students identified as US Black, 5.4 percent as US Hispanic/Latino and 1.7 percent as US Asian. 

Given SLU’s relatively small percentage of students of color, any variation in would not necessarily mean that the supreme court’s decision directly affected enrollment and could be explained by typical enrollment fluctuations. However, we will report how these percentages changed once more information becomes available.  

In June, the Black Laurentian Initiative sent a school wide email addressing the court’s ruling. “We will proactively work with the administration at SLU to ensure that minorities who benefit from affirmative actions will not be drastically affected by the current ruling” they wrote. “We have a great number of success stories who have utilized all of the opportunities available and have moved on to start their careers in spaces where minorities are underrepresented.”  

It remains to be seen what effect the overruling of affirmative action will have on SLU’s person of color enrollment.