Asian-Americans have always had it tough when it comes to the college admissions process. In 2019 one major Supreme court case brought this issue to light when plaintiffs sued the famous ivy, Harvard University. The case was speculated to be the one that would put an end to affirmative action. The plaintiffs were a group of Asians who were rejected by Harvard University, and they claimed that Harvard had a reserved number of seats for their Asian-American students in each incoming class. While the plaintiffs were mainly Asian the man leading the charge was Edward Blum a white male, which is very surprising.

The claim that Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) made in their lawsuit was that Harvard is “employing racially and ethnically discriminatory policies and procedures in administering the undergraduate admissions program” that are biased against Asian American applicants. I don’t think that it is very true because top colleges like Harvard are always in the spotlight and they can not be caught racially discriminating their applicants. In fact, Harvard applicants go through a holistic application process, to make sure that there is no bias when it comes to gender, race, culture, etc.

While race may be an issue when applicants are being considered for a school, cases like these are very distracting for students that are currently applying. Asian-Americans and other minorities may get distracted by cases like Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard because they might believe that something will change in the application process which might give them a better chance. But in reality, these admissions processes are already really fair, as they look at the application holistically.

Cases led by Edward Blum have been like a wild goose chase as he has been going after many top tier colleges to get them to answer for their college admission processes. In 2016 Blum led the charge in the Fisher vs. The University of Texas, but the court upheld that The University of Texas had a race-conscious admissions program. In addition to these cases, Edward Blum is also helping in suing the University of North Carolina in similar charges. What does Blum really stand to gain out of these trials? If Harvard University, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, upheld its racially conscious application process, I don’t think that you should expect any other school in the United States not to do the same. Blum is well known in legal circles to get cases to the Supreme Court and all of them involving race in some capacity.

With many of these cases, Blum has been arguing for “reverse discrimination.” In the case of Abigail Fisher versus The University of Texas, he argued that the university accepted less qualified applicants over Fisher in order to have more diversity in their incoming class. But the court deemed that the University of Texas did nothing wrong. WIth this Harvard case, Blum believes that the plaintiffs of Asian-American students stand a stronger chance as their statistics and accomplishments make them highly qualified. Harvard argues that they received about 37,000 applications with only 2,000 spots to give out. Therefore, it does not come down to who had the most perfect GPA and SAT because thousands of their applicants have those. They are looking to see which of their applicants can bring the most diversity and accomplishments to their school.

 

https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/2/20894934/harvard-admissions-case-affirmative-action

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/us/harvard-admissions-lawsuit.html