The Constitution had a great week at the Supreme Court. In the span of 24 hours, the Court prohibited the violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA v. Harvard), reaffirmed the First Amendment’s prohibition on compelled speech in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, and upheld the separation of powers in Biden v. Nebraska. Just hours after the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the first of these, SFFA v. Harvard, University President Christopher Eisgruber released a statement reflecting his personal and – by virtue of his office – Princeton’s institutional opinions on the outcome. In it, he called the Court’s decision “unwelcome,” “disappointing,” and “regrettable.” Like many other reactions to the ruling, both in the mainstream media and on social media, President Eisgruber’s statement was fraught with inconsistencies.
In the first sentence of his statement, Eisgruber argued that Princeton’s policy of “tak[ing] race into account as one factor among many in a holistic admission process” is a standard practice that comports with “fifty years of established case law.” Here, Eisgruber seemingly makes it clear that Princeton’s admissions office considers race just one element of its criteria. Two sentences later, however, he proclaimed that the Court’s “decision narrows [the University’s] discretion” in admissions “significantly,” alleging that it kneecapped the University’s ability to assemble diverse classes of incoming students. To conclude, he assured sympathetic readers that, in anticipation of the decision and its accompanying “restrictions,” the University has already begun considering ways to alter its current admissions practices “with assistance and advice from legal counsel.”
When it comes to the University’s mission of achieving diversity, President Eisgruber cannot have it both ways. Either Princeton’s current process takes a holistic view of its applicants, thus reducing racial identity to just “one factor among many” in determining an applicant’s potential fit, or it makes racial identity one of the major, stand-alone factors in determining this fit, thus undermining the University’s commitment to “holistic” admissions.
In his opinion, Chief Justice Roberts exposed this contradiction, pointing to the claims made by Harvard and the University of North Carolina that considerations of racial identity “[do] not impact many admissions decisions,” “yet, at the same time… that the demographics of their admitted classes would meaningfully change if race-based admissions were abandoned.” In their briefs and oral argument, Harvard and UNC made the same self-contradicting arguments that President Eisgruber put forth in his own statement. What the Chief Justice aptly observed is the conspicuous gap between the stated and actual importance of race in university admissions, which, judging by the respondents’ lengthy and impassioned effort to preserve race-based affirmative action in court, is substantial.
Chief Justice Roberts also rejected the legality of using race qua race as a permissible factor to tip the scales in favor of any particular applicant, writing that a “student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.” In the first part of his statement, President Eisgruber extolled the virtues of diversity as a holistic concept, yet in the second part, he did precisely what Roberts warns against: reducing diversity to a single, immutable component. As fellow Princetonian Matthew Wilson recently wrote, true diversity encompasses all differences “of background, perspective, and viewpoint that universities like Princeton ought to have,” not just a single, stand-alone characteristic.
Sadly, President Eisgruber’s statement undermines the very thing which, in my mind, made Princeton’s admissions process unique among other institutions: its totality. When I was applying to college just a year and a half ago, I considered the depth of Princeton’s application supplement a great benefit to its applicants. Across seven application essays, I was able to discuss my passion for constitutional law, my love of theater, my experience as a judicial intern, and even my deep connection to the lyrics of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man.” I shared my challenges, hopes, dreams, and passions. As an anxious college applicant, it made me feel like Princeton truly wanted to know who I was, both as a student and as a person. While many schools touted their allegedly “holistic” admissions processes, Princeton seemed to be one of the few that actually kept its promise.
Although President Eisgruber’s statement doesn’t fully sour my view of Princeton’s admissions process, it raises important questions as to the University’s true intentions. College admissions are notoriously lacking in transparency. To quote Lin-Manuel Miranda (speaking through a fictionalized Aaron Burr in the musical Hamilton), “No one really knows how the game is played, the art of the trade, how the sausage gets made, we just assume that it happens.” University admissions offices are black boxes. We know what goes in (an application), we know what comes out (a decision), but we never know what actually transpires in “the room where it happens.”
President Eisgruber’s lack of transparency is itself a microcosm of the broader lack of transparency in college admissions. Although I cannot answer the questions raised by his statement’s inconsistencies, I hope that it leads to greater transparency in both his intentions and those of the University as a whole. Princeton’s current students and future applicants deserve better than doublethink. They deserve better than a series of contradictions and deflections. They deserve the truth.
Now that the Supreme Court has finally overturned race-based affirmative action in SFFA v. Harvard, I hope that students from all walks of life can be assured that they will be evaluated as sums of their talents and experiences – as unique individuals who will make valuable contributions to their campus, their community, and their country.
(photo courtesy of Princeton Office of Communications)
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