Facing accusations that it was trying to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action, Columbia Law School has said a requirement on its website that all applicants would have to submit a 90-second “video statement” was actually published in error, according to a new report.
“All applicants will be required to submit a short video, no longer than 90 seconds, addressing a question chosen at random,” a message on the school’s website said on Monday morning. “The video statement will allow applicants to provide the Admissions Committee with additional insight into their personal strengths.”
But by Monday evening, the requirement was removed from the site after the Washington Free Beacon asked the school about it.
“Video statements will not be required as part of the Fall 2024 J.D. application when it becomes available in September,” the law school reportedly told the Free Beacon. “It was inadvertently listed on the Law School’s website and has since been corrected.”
Columbia did not tell the outlet whether video statements would be optional going forward.
While the law school required transfer applicants to submit video statements beginning in May under a new pilot program that has since ended, the message on the school’s website expanding the requirement to all applicants did not appear on the school’s website until after the Supreme Court’s ruling on race-based admissions in June, according to the report.
Edward Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, the group behind the legal challenge that led to the Supreme Court’s decision, told the Free Beacon the video requirement “has all the hallmarks of a willful effort to evade the requirements of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.”
“What is a 90-second video supposed to legitimately convey that a written statement could not?” Blum said.
David Bernstein, a professor at George Mason Law School, said a video requirement “looks like an insurance policy in case their lawyers say ‘you’re not allowed to ask about race.'”
“I have never heard of law school requiring video,” he said.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the six-justice majority that, “The Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”
The Court’s ruling still leaves room for universities to consider an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, though Roberts was careful to note this does not allow universities to use application essays or other means to circumvent its ruling. Instead, “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race,” Roberts explained.
A cert petition filed by the Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., suggests that an African American applicant in the fourth-lowest academic decile has a higher chance of acceptance than an Asian American applicant in the top decile, while an Asian American student in the fourth-lowest decile has less than a one percent chance of acceptance.