Trump Rescinds Obama Policy On Race, College Admissions: POLL

Schools and universities now have the federal government’s approval — if not urging — to take a race-neutral approach to students they are considering for admission. On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced it would rescind Obama-era guidance that encouraged taking into account a student’s race in order to promote diversity.

The announcement comes shortly after the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the most recent opinion on the subject that bolstered colleges’ use of race as a factor in the admissions process.

The Obama administration had issued a policy document in 2011 saying that schools have a “compelling interest” in ensuring a diverse student body, while also saying that race should not be the primary factor in the decision to admit a student.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that the new federal action is President Trump’s way of trying to keep minorities out of colleges and should have no effect on the admission policies of the SUNY and CUNY systems.

He issued an open letter to SUNY Board of Trustees Chairman H. Carl McCall and CUNY Board of Trustees Chairman William C. Thompson Jr., directing them to maintain their diversity and inclusion plans.

“The Trump administration’s move to rescind the guidelines on using race in college admissions is a blatant attempt to limit the participation of minorities in higher education,” Cuomo said in the open letter.

“It is part of a troubling trend by the president and his administration to alienate minorities and build walls to diversity and equal participation in society,” he said.

Cuomo said that the issue of affirmative action has been going through the courts since 1978 with Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke and, most recently, the 2016 Fisher vs. University of Texas decision.

“The courts have determined that diversity is a valuable and allowable part of higher education,” he said.

In the Bakke case, the Supreme Court ruled that racial “quotas” were unconstitutional, but a school’s use of affirmative action to accept more applicants who were minorities was OK in some circumstances, thirteen.org said.

The Fisher case affirmed, in a 4-3 decision, that the University of Texas at Austin lawfully used its race-conscious admissions program when Abigail Fisher applied to the school in 2008, scotusblog.com said. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion.

Cuomo said New York embraces and encourages diversity. He said SUNY is nearly 45 percent minority, with CUNY at 76 percent.

Cuomo directed the SUNY and CUNY systems to reexamine existing plans to make certain they are furthering the state’s goals in diversity and inclusion and to prepare a report by Aug. 15 outlining how they will expand and increase diversity representation on the state’s campuses.

Affirmative action opponents were glad to see the administration make the move to rescind the policy.

Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Falls Church, VA, said it was appropriate to get rid of policies that encouraged schools to consider race and ethnicity in the admissions process.

“Students should be able to go to a school without regard to their skin color or what country their ancestors came from,” he told the Washington Post.

What are your thoughts about the use of race and ethnicity as factors in the college admissions process. Vote in our unscientific poll and leave a comment below.

Image via Shutterstock/Johnny Habell.