On Wednesday, February 22nd, I went to a deliberation entitled “Affirmative Action: It’s Not So Black and White.” The deliberation was very informative as we discussed different approaches for affirmative action, and whether it was morally viable. As I recently went through the college application process, the issue was very relevant to my own life.

The three approaches included allowing each college to decide on whether or not to include affirmative action in their admissions and basing affirmative action off of socioeconomic status rather than race. One of the major ideas brought up was whether affirmative action was unfair to students who possibly had better grades and test scores but weren’t being allowed into the university because minority students were put in their place. There have actually been court cases about affirmative action which have ended in the supreme court which ruled that generally quantitative measures (such as a quota system or adding extra points for minorities in a point based system) were unlawful, but other forms of affirmative action were allowed. However, this makes affirmative action a very grey subject.

We ended up deciding that a university should look to accept more students of minorities, especially if diversity is one of the values of the university. This way, other students can also benefit from being educated with a more diverse populous. Admissions offices are often looking at students “holistically” rather than just analyzing their scores, although this is not always the case at big schools. At Penn State, getting into the actual university is mostly based on SAT scores and GPA, but getting into Schreyer is based to a much greater degree on other activities. In order to create a more diverse student body at Penn State in a nonquantitative manner, Penn State needs to ensure it advertises to minority high school students and ensures they know they can apply.

One possible issue with affirmative action is allowing students into schools who will not perform well. The purpose of competitive admissions is to make sure the students are up to the rigorous academic standards of a school. Retention rates are an important part of ranking universities, so accepting students who did not perform as well in high school is a risk. In my own experience, I know that Penn State acts as the community college for State College Area High School, and accepts more students from our school than they would from other populations. At the same time, we have a much higher dropout rate and tend to be less successful in college. This can lead to college being a drain on resources as students will not end up with degrees. Universities still have to make sure the students they accept are going to be able to succeed and give them extra resources if necessary.

We also looked at the idea of basing affirmative action on socioeconomic status rather than race. While the education gap is decreasing between races, there is still a strong education gap among different socioeconomic groups. In doing this, there would still be more diverse students from different backgrounds, and hopefully minorities would also increase in number. However, due to our country’s history of institutionalized racism and lingering inequalities, it may be important to continue affirmative action for minorities and instead do some hybrid system.

Overall, this deliberation taught me a lot about possible solutions to the issue of affirmative action. I do believe affirmative action should be continued until it’s no longer necessary, that is until students of all racial groups are equally as successful and colleges populations represent the population of the area they are serving.