Changes in affirmative action may have little impact on Hawaii schools

University officials say the impact in Hawaii would be minimal should the U.S. Supreme Court strike down racial affirmative action in school admissions.

At the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii’s flagship public university, Hawaii Pacific University and Chaminade, students’ race is tracked, however it is not used as a determining factor in their admissions processes.

UH Manoa’s vice provost for enrollment management, Nikki Chun, said that UH only tracks students’ race so that the school can develop its programs to best suit student needs.

“There’s so many factors that go into the admissions decision, and the decision does not hinge on race,” Chun said. “I’ve worked at other more selective institutions and none of our decisions hinged on race in the way that people think that it does.”

Jennifer Walsh, Hawaii Pacific University’s senior vice president and provost, said the use of affirmative action is particularly prevalent in highly competitive universities that turn away 90% to 95% of their applicants.

“Realistically, they’re never going to have enough spots to offer everyone that has the test scores and GPA,” Walsh said. “So how are they going to tailor that very, very small group so that it all doesn’t come from the same high achieving Caucasian or Asian American population, because those are the strongest academic groups that we see in higher ed today.”

The use of affirmative action in school admissions is being questioned in two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court that involve Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

The petitioner for both cases is a group called the Students for Fair Admissions, which argues that using race as a factor in admissions is unconstitutional.

“Universities have been doing this for a really long time,” said Allen Koh, CEO of the Cardinal Education consulting firm. “It’s only relatively recently that you’ve had lawsuits filed … arguing that affirmative action is actually a form of discrimination.”

The use of racial affirmative action becomes apparent when looking at a college’s demographics over time, Koh added.

“Colleges say they’re not trying to recruit a certain number of minorities every year,” Koh said. “But the reality is they have the same percentages of all the minorities every single year.”

In both cases, the Students for Fair Admissions petitioned that considering race in the admissions process violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and in their case against Harvard, they argue that it also violates the 14th Amendment.

Arguments for both cases are scheduled to be heard in November with the 2003 case of Grutter v. Bollinger in question. The 2003 case allowed the University of Michigan to consider race among its applicants in order to maintain a diverse student body, on a narrowly tailored basis.

“The argument so far has been successful, when the government agency, in this case a public university or private university who uses government funds say for financial aid, is able to demonstrate that there’s no other way to accomplish that same goal if it weren’t for this extra race-based consideration,” explained Walsh.

The Students for Fair Admissions specifically questioned whether Harvard is violating Title VI, “by penalizing Asian American applicants, engaging in racial balancing, overemphasizing race and rejecting workable race-neutral alternatives.”

Koh said that generally, Asian Americans of higher socioeconomic backgrounds are often hindered by affirmative action in admissions because they are such a large and diverse population lumped together into one ethnic group.

“They tend to be more affluent, more well-educated, basically desiring the top spots,” Koh said. “These policies are making it more challenging for them to attain because they’re limiting the amount of Asians.”

So far, courts have found a compelling interest for universities to maintain diversified classes, Walsh said.

“The diversity that’s linked to racial and ethnic identity is really important because it adds to the complexity of the student’s experiences … in addition to having better outcomes for people who interact with the graduates of that university,” Walsh said. “We don’t want to see our system so stratified that certain racial and ethnic groups who are already dealing with systemic discrimination issues continue to find themselves shut out of elite opportunities.”

But previous cases, such as the recent abortion decision, already have demonstrated the Supreme Court’s willingness to ignore the rule of precedent, Walsh said in an email to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. This, combined with the fact that the current conservative majority has clearly signaled its aversion to the practice, distinctly signals to Walsh that the Supreme Court likely will overturn affirmative action precedents.

In this event, both Walsh and Koh predict that schools will turn to alternative factors to ensure diversity.

Koh suggested that schools could begin looking at an applicant’s socioeconomic background, a practice which Princeton already uses by admitting a little over a fifth of its undergraduates who are first-generation college students, Koh said.

Walsh proposed geographic or high school backgrounds as potentially effective proxies for racial affirmative action.“It’s gonna be a combination of factors that they’re going to have to, for lack of a better word, experiment with to see what yields them the most diverse group,” Walsh said.

The potential change primarily would affect graduate and undergraduate universities that are under more scrutiny than smaller private schools or those that teach grades kindergarten through 12, Koh said.

Considering that Hawaii colleges aren’t as selective as the elite schools involved in the current court cases, and that Hawaii is innately diverse, Walsh suspects that the potential overturning of affirmative action would not noticeably affect admissions at Hawaii colleges.

“Here at Hawaii Pacific … we don’t have to use any kind of race or ethnicity lens to review (students) because we have space for pretty much everyone who is otherwise eligible in terms of high school GPA,” Walsh said.

Both Chun and Christine Denton, Chaminade’s vice president of human resources and legal affairs, have similar views.

“We organically attract what our community has, which is a very diverse population,” Denton said.

Although changes in Hawaii colleges aren’t expected to be noticeable, some still believe the matter is concerning.

“Higher education in general is supposed to be the great equalizers of society,” said Willy Kauai, UH Manoa’s director of Native Hawaiian student services. “If we’re not making education easily accessible for all, then we’re gonna continue to create racial hierarchies in society.”

Alphonso Braggs, president of the Hawaii branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said that achieving diversity is impossible without the consideration of race.

“The question really comes down to, should college campuses be reflected of the diversity of our nation,” Braggs said. “It shows a paradigm shift in America that is slowly but surely progressing in the wrong direction. And it certainly does not make America a more healthy place to live, grow and develop and foster respect for our fellow men and women.”

Walsh believes that in the likely event that affirmative action precedents are overturned, universities such as those in Hawaii may need to make more efforts to support students from underrepresented backgrounds.

“It will be our job to really be more bold in our support for students in that environment because they may not find as many opportunities in other selective institutions,” Walsh said.

Neither Walsh nor Denton expect a need to alter their schools’ admissions processes if affirmative action precedents are overturned, they said.

Depending on what’s determined in the Supreme Court, UH might have to reevaluate how it tracks its campus’ diversity, Chun said. However the university will continue to affirm inclusivity and diversity in order to best serve its diverse community, she said.

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Linsey Dower covers ethnic and cultural affairs and is a corps member of Report for America, a national service organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.