Sheryl Carter ’82 arrived at Yale ten years after the institution started to admit women. When she was in high school preparing for the college admissions process, she never thought about going to Yale. Carter only ended up applying to three schools: Brandeis, because Angela Davis went there; Notre Dame; and then Yale, because they invited her to apply. She was a national merit scholar and was conscious that, as a Black girl from the Midwest who attended a parochial school, she benefited from the opportunities provided by Affirmative Action. While institutions like Yale were not then sending admissions officers to schools like Carter’s to actively recruit students, that letter showed Carter that they were intentionally thinking about ways to increase the diversity of their student body.
The Politic spoke with a confident and inquisitive Carter on Zoom. She graduated from Yale with a B.A. in History and received a from Pepperdine University with a Professional Mediation Certificate from their Straus School of Law. Now, Carter is a Principal Consultant of The Carter Leadership Collaborative LLC which provides technical assistance to groups and organizations around the country seeking to enhance their cultural responsiveness, organizational effectiveness, industry impact, and stakeholder satisfaction. Additionally, she has served in leadership positions on various Yale volunteer boards including Yale Black Alumni Association, YaleWomen, YaleLA, and the Yale Alumni Association Board of Governors volunteer board.
In 2023, Carter’s legacy—and that of other alumni who paved the way for inclusion and opportunity for future Yale students of color—was threatened by the United States Supreme Court’s ruling against race-conscious admissions policies at colleges and universities. Race-conscious admissions, known as Affirmative Action, allowed colleges and universities to consider a student’s race or ethnicity as one of many relevant factors when making admissions decisions. Affirmative Action has proven effective in increasing access to higher education for historically underrepresented groups, helping to foster greater diversity and equity in otherwise exclusive academic institutions. Affirmative Action is essentially an effort to remedy historical discrimination and systemic inequities that have long affected access to higher education.
The term Affirmative Action was coined in 1935 in the National Labor Relations Act, a federal law that gave workers the right to form and join unions. At that time, Affirmative Action stipulated that employers were required to take an active role in treating employees fairly. It was not until 1968 that Affirmative Action’s purview expanded to include education. The 1968 Supreme Court decision in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County mandated that all school boards provide a plan to end segregated school systems in their district, putting in compliance with Brown v. Board of Education (1954). However, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) set the precedent for the role of Affirmative Action in higher education to promote diversity. Both cases affirmed the consideration of race in admissions decisions. While the 1978 case ruled the use of strict racial quotas unconstitutional, it held that affirmative action programs were permissible. Similarly, the 2003 case upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s use of affirmative action in its admissions process.
The end of Affirmative Action has been a long time coming. In November 2014, anti-Affirmative Action activist Edward Blum and his organization, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court in Boston against Harvard University’s race-conscious admissions policy. Blum and SFFA argued that Affirmative Action unlawfully discriminates against Asian American applicants and violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Both the District Circuit Court and Appeals Court, however, found that Harvard University did not intentionally discriminate against Asian American applicants and that the admissions policy was necessary to achieve the benefits of a diverse student body.
But SFFA appealed again to the Supreme Court, who, despite warning from the Justice Department, granted SFFA’s petition not only against Harvard, but also the University of North Carolina (UNC). Blum and his organization argued that Harvard and other institutions have a “personal” rating system that penalizes Asian Americans, rating them lower on non-academic traits, despite strong academic and extracurricular profiles. They asserted that institutions such as Harvard and UNC participate in racial balancing, in which schools shape their student body to resemble the racial composition of the community as a whole; as a result of racial balancing, Black and Latine applicants, especially those with lower standardized test scores, have an unfair advantage.
The claim of discrimination specifically against Asian Americans, however, overlooks the struggles and inequities that other minorities endure in the college admissions process. Admissions committees assess multiple dimensions of an applicant, including leadership, life experiences, and contributions to campus culture. In June 2023, after reviewing the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC, the Court held that race-conscious admissions policies violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, overturning more than 40 years of precedent.
***“When you have people who come from different backgrounds, sharing spaces, engaging in discussions, and sharing perspectives, it’s enriching. It’s informative. It’s educational,” Carter told The Politic. “I like to reckon it a garden. You can have a beautiful rose garden… they might be slightly different colors, but it’s basically a rose garden…But if you introduce some jasmine, some honeysuckle, some rosemary, the fragrance is going to be much more robust, the colors are going to be a lot different. And so the experience of being in an environment like that is going to be much more fulfilling, much more engaging, and much more satisfying.”
Affirmative Action emerged as a response to centuries of systemic racism, exclusion, and discrimination—a trifecta whose impact went beyond the Black and Latine communities. Without this historical lens, discussions about the issue’s purpose are often oversimplified. At its core, Affirmative Action was not about offering preferential treatment, but leveling the playing field by acknowledging that merit and potential cannot be fairly assessed without accounting for systemic disparities faced by certain racial groups.
Matthew Cyntje, a Black sophomore at Columbia University, understands first-hand the critical function of Affirmative Action. “I’ve met a lot of people that go to top private schools, and I went to a school in East Harlem. There’s nothing I could have really ever done to compete with those types of people, because I did not have the resources, my parents did not have the resources, and my school did not have the resources.” More specifically, Cyntje felt that he and his high school lacked ties to the necessary networks and pre-professional opportunities that make internships and elite colleges feel within reach. “I see the purpose of Affirmative Action as almost equaling out people’s extracurricular and what they have done,” Cyntje said.
Cyntje’s experience emphasizes that achievement cannot be solely attributed to individual effort and merit when resources and support are unevenly distributed. Opponents of Affirmative Action argue that if race were simply removed from the equation, admissions could become purely merit-based and free from bias. But all that Affirmative Action offers is a contextualization of merit in relationship to social equity students’ backgrounds. Even in 2024, persisting disparities in K-12 education, income inequality, and access to resources remain heavily racialized. Ignoring race in college admissions does not eliminate these inequalities; it obscures them.
As Affirmative Action continues to garner tremendous controversial discourse about race, merit, and fairness, Asian American communities recount their own experiences with race-conscious admissions. Many Asian Americans feel that Affirmative Action is not a tool to “level the playing field” in college admissions, but a barrier. They feel mischaracterized as a monolithic group in the college admissions process due to a long history of stereotyping, particularly as the so-called model minority. This reductive label has been seen as masking the complexity and diversity within Asian communities, as well as hindering their access to higher education opportunities.
Yale College Sophomore Katelyn Wang shared her perspective on Affirmative Action, saying, “Where I come from, a lot of families emigrated from China, and a huge part of my experience growing up is rooted in meritocracy and academic excellence. If you are academically successful enough, you may have the opportunity to…build a better future for yourself.” She noted that historical and cultural experiences among Asian American communities make it difficult to understand the American college admissions process. “My grandparents think that the SAT is the holy grail…so it is hard to explain to them that the SAT is just one factor of an application…because tests are this lifeline…Affirmative Action in their eyes discredits that hard work.” Wang also described how she was often told to downplay her Chinese–American identity in her college application, a practice with which she took issue. She recalled that many members of her community even considered changing their last names to avoid biased judgment by admissions committees. At its core, the debate over Affirmative Action reveals individuals striving for the same goal—to access the best possible educational opportunities. Nonetheless, individuals remain deeply vulnerable to the fear caused by inequities in the admissions process, and it ultimately divides instead of unifies them.
Only the class of 2028’s admissions process was subject to last year’s Supreme Court Affirmative Action decision. As such, it is too early to arrive at a determination about the overturn’s long-term effects.
Yale’s class of 2028 experienced surprising demographic shifts, with Black and Latine student enrollment remaining similar to previous years, white enrollment increasing, and Asian American enrollment decreasing. In contrast, at peer institutions such as Amherst, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and MIT, Asian American enrollment rose, while Black and Latine enrollment decreased significantly. Sidney Essandoh, a sophomore at Amherst College, shared his thoughts on these results. “Seeing Amherst’s Black and Latino student populations decrease was very disappointing. Initially, the diversity of Amherst College was what drew me to the school, so it is sad to realize that the Black students just a year behind me will not be able to have the experience I had,” he said. Essandoh strongly believes that if he were a student applying this coming admissions cycle, his engagement with Amherst would have been completely different.
For many students, especially those in historically underrepresented groups, diversity is a critical factor in deciding which colleges to apply to and, ultimately, where to attend. When the Supreme Court announced their decision against Affirmative Action, students in the Class of 2028 had just begun the application process. The ban on Affirmative Action influenced how some students approached their application processes. Oyin Adebomojo ‘28 realized that post Affirmative Action ban would impact the demographics of the student body, so colleges that she may have been interested in applying to before, no longer seemed like an option. “Diversity was a huge thing that deterred me from some colleges. So in a way, affirmative action was playing a role in my college admission decision,” she said.
For students like Katie Alverez ’28, whose high school experiences did not offer opportunities for identity-based community building, selecting a culturally diverse college was of the utmost importance. Alvarez said, “At my high school, I felt isolated at times, as I would be the only Hispanic in my classes for the most part. So, I felt like I had to go out of my way to ensure that [the] people who were reading my essays knew my identity and knew where I came from.” Since Alverez felt that diversity was no longer as explicitly valued as before, she made an effort to seek it out on campus, particularly within La Casa Cultural de Julia de Burgos, Yale’s Latino Cultural Center. “I would say that every Hispanic student that I met on campus, we share that bond. We all have that knowledge that we had to fight our way in the last admission round to get here.”
For Carter, having a community of students at Yale who shared her cultural identity was crucial to her college experience. During her time at Yale, Carter leaned on the members of the Black Student Alliance at Yale. “The black table was a big thing when we were there, because it was a kind of trauma bonding…it’s a cocoon, it is protection,” Carter said.
Yale has five cultural centers and communities on campus: La Casa; the Afro-American Cultural Center, affectionately known as The House; the Asian American Cultural Center (AACC); the Native American Cultural Center; and MENA, a cultural suite for Middle Eastern, North African, and Muslim students. These spaces serve as social hubs and gathering places that nurture discovery of a students cultural identity, promote student leadership, encourage critical communal reflection, and inspire informed action and advocacy for social justice. Dean Timeica E. Bethel ’11, an Assistant Dean of Yale College and the Director of the Afro-American Cultural Center, emphasized the role of cultural centers in helping students find a sense of belonging.
“We see a lot of students even more engaged in the centers…which is wonderful to see. There are so many people in this building all day long…saying, ‘What is this place? I heard we have a house. What does that mean?’ And being able to share that this is their home, too, is very heartwarming for me as a Director,” Bethel said. “I am excited to see these classes of Yalies come through after this Affirmative Action decision because I think it really shows the resilience and determination of students that are not allowing the Affirmative Action decision to stop them from accessing the education they deserve,” she said.
The sense of home that the “The House” and other cultural centers on campus cultivate is symbolic of the university’s role in fostering inclusivity. “It will be even more important for us to be intentional about the ways that we prioritize diversity, because it would be easy for us to say because of the decision that the Supreme Court made, there’s not much we can do, but that’s not true. There are things we could d0. It makes our job harder, but it just means we have to put even more thought and intentionality behind our work,” concluded Dean Bethel. Colleges, Yale included, have been putting in the “work” through updating their admissions policies to address race in a post-Affirmative Action era.
Changes include training admissions staff to evaluate applications without considering race or ethnicity. Yale will continue its whole-person review process, evaluating each applicant based on various quantitative and qualitative factors. The application now includes three short essay prompts inviting applicants to reflect on personal experiences, community, or discussing opposing viewpoints. Starting this fall, admissions officers will use place-based data from the Opportunity Atlas, measuring economic mobility at the census tract level. The admissions office is also expanding outreach to attract high-achieving students from underrepresented backgrounds. For the first time ever, Yale is paying to fly in fifty prospective high school seniors from the United States or its territories for the Yale in MOHtion program, which promotes diversity through Yale’s cultural centers and encourages a broader understanding of the different cultures and experiences of Yale students.
Yale’s ability to achieve relatively similar demographics in the 2028 admissions cycle, while notable, is not evidence that Affirmative Action was not necessary, especially given that the demographics from peer institutions do not reflect the same demographic diversity. Admissions data from future years will be vital in evaluating the effect of Affirmative Action on University diversity.
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In an interview with The Politic, Jeremiah Quinlan, Yale’s Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, emphasized, “It is not like one year we were successful, and we do not have to continue being consistent with our plan. Yale has a five year plan to responsibly see the impact of the decision on the admissions process.” Dean Quinlan and the admissions office’s goal is to make sure students from a variety of different backgrounds continue to feel confident in applying to institutions like Yale. “There is no quota or rubric. Admissions officers read file by file observing students academic ability and readiness, as well as what they are going to bring onto campus. We do not track topics of essay, and it’s fair to say we did not see a noticeable increase in students writing about their race and/or ethnicity. When it comes to the admissions process, students should write about what is valuable to them.”
The Supreme Court’s decision to end race-conscious admissions marks a significant turning point for higher education. As Yale and other institutions adapt to a post-Affirmative Action landscape, the challenge is to continue cultivating what Carter describes as a diverse, enriching garden of experiences where students from all backgrounds can thrive.