Negative action?

Last month, high school senior Suzy Lee Weiss spurred national controversy when she penned an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal titled “To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me.” Criticizing universities’ emphasis on diversity, she mockingly wrote, “Show me to any closet, and I would've happily come out of it” and “Sen. Elizabeth Warren, I salute you and your 1/32 Cherokee heritage.”

While she later claimed on The Today Show that her comments were simply “satire,” her controversial views on diversity caught the attention of many — even The Daily Princetonian’s own Morgan Jerkins. Although it is questionable whether Weiss’ response was the best approach to being rejected from her dream colleges, it does raise interesting questions over what the role of affirmative action should be in the college admissions process.

Last month, Princeton University only offered 7.29 percent of its applicants a spot in the Class of 2017. With many qualified candidates and few spots, the question of how to stand out is constantly an issue. There are the factors that we view as in our control — such as extracurriculars or grades — but we recognize that the uncontrollable — namely race — is also taken into account. To the many who believe that college admissions should solely reflect one’s academic ability, the concept of admission based on the uncontrollable is unsettling.

Within the next few weeks, the Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision on a case heard last October, Fisher v. University of Texas. The case questions whether the usage of affirmative action by schools in the college application process is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which states that no person shall be denied “equal protection of the laws.” Depending on how the court decides, schools, like Princeton, may have to completely relook at how they evaluate future prospective students.

Up until now, as a result of several Supreme Court cases including Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), affirmative action — under certain conditions such as no quotas on the number of minority students per class — has been given the green light by the Supreme Court. While non-educational affirmative action has been used in the past to make up for historical wrongs, Justice Powell, in the Bakke case, highlighted that “remedying of the effects of ‘societal discrimination,’ [is] an amorphous concept of injury that may be ageless in its reach into the past.”

Instead, Powell argued that “[t]he diversity that furthers a compelling state interest encompasses a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics, of which racial or ethnic origin is but a single, though important, element.” There are other factors that create diversity among a group beyond race.

To “create” diversity is definitely a difficult task, and, because schools do not specifically state how they judge each candidate, I won’t pretend that I am in any position to evaluate the school’s affirmative action policy or its impact on the “quality” of its students. That being said, it is clear that affirmative action is far from loved. In a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, it was found that 69 percent of millennials opposed college affirmative action while only 19 percent approved — signaling a significant change from the past where approval rates normally hovered around 50 percent.

As former Princeton President Bowen wrote in an article for Princeton Alumni Weekly, “[learning] occurs through interactions among students of both sexes; of different races, religions and backgrounds.” The purpose behind affirmative action is to create a stronger learning environment through interactions. However, this cannot occur if students come to the assumption that their peers are of a lesser standard or got in through unearned assistance; I by no means attest that this view is true, only that the perception alone is a damaging one to the mission Bowen expressed.

Although one’s past — in terms of their experiences and difficulties, should be taken into account, the belief that it can be judged by one’s race seems, to me, like a big mistake. It would be ridiculous to claim that Malia Obama, who will be applying to college in three years, had the same life challenges as a black child who lives on government assistance in a poor neighborhood. In fact, it actually seems that economic status would be a much better measurement. The poor child, unlike the rich student, cannot afford an SAT tutor or to be driven to soccer practice every day after school. Poverty is color-blind.

While it can be argued that thanks to affirmative action there is more diversity today and that it has been helpful in the past, nowadays it appears to have created a societal perception that accepted minority students are less “deserving” or “qualified,” regardless of whether or not this is true. In light of this, diversity should still play a role in the college admissions process; however, affirmative action should be focused instead on factors that are more reflective of one’s life struggles, wealth often being a major factor. In creating diversity across socioeconomic lines, you would still have racial and ethnic diversity — the two are not mutually exclusive. Maybe then we wouldn’t have to waste media attention on the controversial statements of a disgruntled and disillusioned high schooler.

Benjamin Dinovelli is a freshman from Mystic, Conn. He can be reached at bjd5@princeton.edu.