The Patriot Post® · Here Comes the Affirmative Action End Run

The gatekeepers of higher ed have been hard at work, and we can’t say we’re surprised.

It’s been nearly a month since the Supreme Court rightly ruled that the use of racial discrimination in college admissions is unconstitutional, which means they’ve had a month to figure out how to get around the law without appearing to do so.

At the time of the decision, we called it a mixed bag because the Court left the door open for future racial discrimination. It did so by saying that universities have a compelling interest in the “educational benefits that flow from” racial diversity, which promotes “cross-racial understanding.”

In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts said that colleges can still consider their applicants’ race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.” And that’s all the race-counters within college admissions offices needed to hear. Heck, The New York Times published a whole laundry list of potential workarounds within a week of the decision.

As The Wall Street Journal now reports, the college application process at most schools goes live on August 1, so time is of the essence. And higher ed hasn’t wasted any time:

Colleges are rethinking what information they ask from applicants — and even which words they use to extract those details — as they react to last month’s Supreme Court ruling that dramatically limited how they can consider race when selecting students.

Schools are also making changes to where they scout for potential students, how application files get reviewed, and longstanding policies governing which groups of candidates get preferential treatment. School officials say they remain committed to enrolling a diverse class of students, even if the tools they can use have changed.

How might higher ed exploit this little “diversity” loophole? The Journal continues: “Rice University, Colorado College, Hampshire College and Lehigh University say they are tweaking their essay questions in light of the ruling. Some are still finalizing the exact language. ‘The idea is to provide a vehicle for students of all backgrounds and all contexts to feel as though they can tell their story in a way that the rest of the application might not allow them to do,’ said Dan Warner, Lehigh’s vice provost for admissions and financial aid.”

Our enterprising friends at The Babylon Bee have already gamed it out:

No, it’s not as bad as all that just yet. But give it time. These are leftist institutions, after all, so Rule of Law is optional.

On the day of the Supreme Court’s decision, Ethan Blevins, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, put it this way: “While this is a key win for individual rights, the court did not go far enough. The court should have held that race can play no role in university admissions whatsoever. Instead, the court has opted to prop up a feeble precedent that leaves the door ajar for ongoing discrimination.”

Blevins is right. And Chief Justice Roberts is wrong to have done it. Let’s recall what Roberts famously and rightly said 16 years ago: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

What the chief justice said this time around was equally forceful: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

If only Roberts had been true to the letter of his words.

“The 1964 Civil Rights Act clearly forbids treating Americans differently by race,” says Edward Blum, the man behind the lawsuits that ultimately forced the Supreme Court’s decision. “That seems to have been lost over the years.”

Indeed. As for enforcing the newly defined law, Blum recently sent sternly worded letters “reminding 150 schools to heed the new legal limitations.” In addition, as the Journal reports, Ohio Republican Senator J.D. Vance sent a letter to the Ivy League schools and to two notoriously liberal schools in his native Ohio, Oberlin and Kenyon Colleges. “The United States Senate is prepared to use its full investigative powers to uncover circumvention, covert or otherwise, of the Supreme Court’s ruling,” he warned.

This sounds like it’ll be more frustrating than Whac-a-Mole.

Ultimately, we think, a reevaluation of the value of a college degree is in order — not because of higher ed’s obsession with race, but because of its failure to provide value and its failure to adequately prepare our workforce. In a brilliant essay on this topic, North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx does just this, arguing that the idea that everyone should have a college degree is a myth, and a harmful one at that.

For some of us, but not all, it might just be time to say, To hell with college.