Law Schools

Emory's Response To The Supreme Court Killing Affirmative Action? Tell Us About Your Community.

Keep applying, folks!

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Group hands on top of each other of diverse multi-ethnic and multicultural people.Diversity people. Concept of teamwork community and cooperation.Diverse culture.Racial equality.OnenessIn a series of events that are sure to keep Tom Cotton and the like up at night, colleges still care about fostering diversity in their upcoming classes. And, aside from a couple of Republican AGs, it seems like many other institutions care too. Given the wiggle room of Roberts’s opinion and a lack of test cases after the Harvard/UNC decision, the field is ripe for universities to experiment with what initiatives they may use to diversify classrooms. Emory, for example, is welcoming students to write about their culture. From Reuters:

In addition to writing about their favorite songs and why they want to go to college, students applying to Emory University in Atlanta this fall will get new essay prompts aimed at teasing out details about their cultural backgrounds.

The revised questions are among the changes at Emory and other highly selective colleges after the U.S. Supreme Court in June ruled that race-conscious admissions policies were unlawful, upending a longstanding practice for increasing minority enrollment in higher education.

…

One of Emory’s new prompts, for example, asks, “Tell us about a community that you have been part of where your participation helped to change or shape the community for the better.”

This question is an easy lay-up to mention how you’ve spent weekends volunteering at the community food bank your mom used to provide meals to you while growing up because you wanted to pay it forward. You could talk about how you tutored kids whose parents couldn’t afford SAT prep classes. The form of these questions are race neutral. If it so happens that you volunteered with the daughter of a Black Panther and, after learning that the Panthers’ free lunch program may have inspired the government to bolster its free food services, that experience made you gravitate toward studying black history in college, so be it. A story like that wouldn’t run afoul of the Court’s decision and an administrator could reasonably assume that a student with a background like that could be a great contribution to in-class discussions about food access and history.

In short, strong essays are strong essays. Applicants should not let the recent Supreme Court decision steal the air from beneath their wings. You haven’t come this far just to get this far.

US Colleges Refashion Student Essay Prompts After Ban On Affirmative Action [Reuters]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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