After its loss at the Supreme Court, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has banned the consideration of race in its admissions and hiring, with the board of trustees clarifying that the university may not use application essays or any other proxy to consider race.
According to the resolution adopted by the board, “the University shall not unlawfully discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, genetic information, or veteran status in its admissions, hiring and contracting.”
The resolution continues: “The University shall not ‘establish through application essays or other means’ any regime of or encourage heuristics and/or proxies premised upon race-based preferences in hiring or admissions. If the University considers the personal experience of applicants for admission, each applicant ‘must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual – not on the basis of race.'”
The resolution directly quotes Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion forbidding universities from instituting the regime declared unlawful by the Court by other means.
Board chair David Boliek Jr. told the Wall Street Journal that Thursday’s changes took effect immediately.
According to the chairman, the university will still accept essays that discuss race. Roberts himself noted, “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”
However, admissions officers at UNC are expected to read these essays in a colorblind fashion. It is the responsibility of the university to write essay questions that allow students to share their skills and assets without mentioning race, according to Boliek.
Since the June decision, there has been a discussion of how the opinion would be applied practically. Groups opposed to affirmative action have written to universities warning them to comply with the decision fully and not use proxies for race.
Earlier this month, Edward Blum, who led the charge against affirmative action, sent letters to 150 selective colleges and universities recommending that they take four steps to comply with the Court’s ruling.
They include removing from the application the box in which students select their race, prohibiting admissions officers from aggregating any data on the race or ethnicity of applicants, eliminating any definition or guidance regarding “underrepresented” racial groups, and writing “clear instructions that essay answers, personal statements, or other parts of an application cannot be used to ascertain or provide a benefit based on the applicant’s race.”
There has also been disagreement about the scope of the ruling outside of admissions. America First Legal Foundation argued in a letter to 200 law schools late in June that the decision also applies to faculty hiring and law-review membership in those institutions. In response to the letter, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law took the opposite tack, arguing it applies narrowly to admissions.
The resolution did not pass unanimously. Trustee Ralph Meekins Sr. voted against it, saying that the board went beyond what the Supreme Court said in its June ruling, particularly in applying the resolution to hiring university employees. Meekins wanted the board to consult the university’s legal team before acting.
“It was the wrong time,” he told the Journal.
According to Boliek, the school will still work hard to have a diverse student body in all respects.
Other challenges are being considered by groups on both sides of the spectrum, both pointing to Roberts’s view that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
A group of Republican attorneys general has turned to employment, where they see a similar fact pattern of racial preferences. Meanwhile, left-leaning groups have set their sights on legacy admissions, which, in their view, gives preference to a group of predominately white applicants.