College Diversity Feared at Risk

For most of its 166-year history, Pomona College was virtually all white: Its first known African American student graduated in 1962.

These days, Pomona aggressively recruits minority students, defining itself as a campus that brings together bright young people of various opinions, interests, hometowns -- and races.

But as the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether colleges can continue to use race-based affirmative action in admissions, administrators at Pomona and other elite private colleges across the nation fear a return to the past.

Although the cases before the high court involve a public school -- the University of Michigan -- its rulings could apply to the many private colleges and universities that accept federal funds. Officials at colleges such as Pomona say a ruling outlawing the use of race in admissions could reverse decades of progress, making them more like the insular, practically all-white places they were 40 years ago.

The prospect of eliminating affirmative action at her campus is dismaying to Pomona senior Kavya Reddy, 21, an Indian American. Even with its efforts to recruit minority students, Reddy said the college is less diverse than her Riverside high school, and it can’t afford to drop below its 30% minority enrollment.

“The place already feels like it’s almost all white,” she said.

The two cases before the Supreme Court, one involving undergraduates and the other a law school applicant, were argued before the high court last week. They mark the court’s first direct consideration of affirmative action in college admissions in 25 years. A decision is expected by July.

Pomona is one of 28 liberal arts colleges that have jointly filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the University of Michigan in both cases. Occidental College, Caltech and Pepperdine University joined 35 other private universities and colleges in another affirmative action brief in the same cases.

Many of the liberal arts colleges supporting affirmative action are smaller than many high schools. Pomona has 1,500 students. The vast majority of students at such schools live on the campuses, which often are in small towns or rural areas. Classes often have fewer than 20 students.

Those traits amplify the need for diversity, the colleges say. When they were almost all white, they had an insular, country club feel. With a relatively diverse mix, students have opportunities in dormitories, dining rooms and classes to intimately know others with vastly different life experiences.

“So many kids are here 24/7 ... diversity is part of everybody’s day-to-day experience,” said Bruce Poch, Pomona’s dean of admissions.

In such a small community, nothing is race-blind, Poch said, not in classes, not clubs and certainly not admissions.

Pomona’s freshman class of 375 students is picked by admissions officers who often get to know applicants personally.

“The idea that you could have absolute race invisibility is kind of ludicrous,” Poch said. “You’ve met the student in an interview or at their school.”

That argument does not hold sway with Curt Levey, a lawyer with the Center for Individual Rights, the Washington, D.C., group representing the plaintiffs in the University of Michigan cases.

It’s “just silly,” he said. “They’re saying once you see somebody’s face, you have no choice but to discriminate.”

The liberal arts colleges argue that alternative efforts to promote diversity backed by the Bush administration, which do not explicitly consider race, might work at state universities, but they wouldn’t help at private campuses.

The schools could not, for instance, admit the top students from every high school in a state, as public universities do in California, Texas and Florida. Private schools have more limited enrollments and draw students from across the country.

Expanding outreach, another Bush administration suggestion, also is not much of an option. Elite private schools already obtain lists of minority students with high SAT scores and send recruiters to high schools nationwide, they say.

The private colleges defending affirmative action emphasize that their admissions decisions already take into account numerous personal factors that affirmative action opponents have offered as alternatives to race, such as a student’s hometown, the quality of one’s high school, socioeconomic status and parents’ educations. “None of these schools has ever admitted their classes strictly on the basis of grades and SATs. There are a lot of football players and others with different characteristics, talents and family backgrounds,” said Charles S. Sims, the lawyer who wrote the brief for the group of 28 liberal arts colleges.

William C. Hiss, a vice president of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, said his school seeks to admit a class with “radically different backgrounds” such as those from French-speaking parts of Maine and home-schooled students from remote, rural parts of New England.

The college also considers race in admissions partly because “Maine is one of the two whitest states in America.... We have to work very hard to get [minority students] here.”

Levey, of the Center for Individual Rights, suggested that private colleges could adopt their own form of the policies used by universities in California, Texas and Florida that accept students graduating at the top of their high school classes. The colleges would not necessarily be flooded with freshmen from across the country because they have smaller applicant pools than big state universities, he said.

Levey expressed mistrust for the personalized admissions practices at elite private colleges, saying they can mask a school’s true intentions.

“They’re not seeking a critical mass of cello players, fundamentalist Christians or residents of Rocky Mountain states; they’re seeking a critical mass of minorities,” he said.

He likened the process to Harvard’s subjective admissions policies in the earlier part of the 20th century that justified excluding Jews.

At Pomona, many students are following the Supreme Court cases. Some have read the college’s court brief, which the college president e-mailed to students.

“Colorblindness is the worst possible idea,” said Joshua Pasek, 19, who like many of his fellow students was passionate about the need to use race as a factor in admissions.

Pasek said that “SAT scores are a far better predictor of your parents’ income than anything else,” and that race and class must be part of admissions because they are a part of everyone’s lives.

In the classroom, he added, having people of various backgrounds is educational for all. “People’s individual experiences do contribute something.”