UNC System Confirms It Will Strictly Follow Supreme Court Ruling

The University of North Carolina System said there should be strict adherence to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against the state’s affirmative action program in college admissions. 

The high court recently made it clear that race may not be a factor in accepting students onto campus, and the system said there is “no wiggle room.” The Division of Legal Affairs distributed five pages of directives for schools advising against trickery and efforts to work around the ruling.

Justices ruled in separate cases involving UNC Chapel Hill and Harvard. Both filings were brought by Students for Fair Admissions.

And the court’s intent was clear.

The document written by the UNC system declared “race can be neither a means nor an end in college admissions. This applies to admissions practices both written and unwritten — no institution may try to achieve indirectly what the Court prohibited directly.”

Battles have brewed recently between the UNC Board of Governors, appointed by the state’s Republican-led legislature, and leftist school leaders.

Those leaders have engaged in hand-wringing since the high court struck down their ability to use race to give some students entry to schools while blocking others.

The message from the Board of Governors leaves no room for doubt. It specifically clarified that admissions offices may not use application essays or any other factors to create unofficial back-door preferences regarding race.

Race, it further asserted, may not be a factor in hiring decisions.

Harvard’s response to the high court ruling is far different. 

In a June 29 email, then-president elect Claudine Gay told the student body that “the Court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions ‘an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life.”

As it turned out, race-based admissions still exist in U.S. higher education. Some institutions such as Harvard will cling to antiquated ways of rolling out the red carpet for some students while denying entry to others.

Thankfully, North Carolina school admissions will be based on merit. It will require diligence from the Board of Governors and concerned citizens to monitor the practices of colleges that will likely resist the ruling. But a successful outcome will be worth it.