WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action in higher education on June 29 will not affect admissions at Fort Lewis College, said Tom Stritikus, the college’s president.

The court, which ruled 6-3, found that race-conscious admission practices violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees all Americans receive equal protection under the Constitution.

With the ruling, schools such as Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, the two schools at the center of the court’s decision, cannot use race-conscious decisions in their admissions process to achieve student diversity. Instead, the schools will be required to achieve diversity in their student body through other means.

Race, however, will not be entirely eliminated as something a college applicant may want to include in their applications. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that applicants are allowed to write in college essays about how their heritage or culture inspired a leadership role, for example.

While the decision will impact the admission policies that historically benefited students of color and women, the ruling allows institutions to consider a discussion of how race has affected an applicant’s life and experiences that are “concretely tied” to a “quality of character or unique ability.”

In an interview with The Durango Herald, as well as in an op-ed published in the Herald two weeks before the ruling, Stritikus said FLC does not consider race in its admissions process; instead, it admits students based on whether admissions officials believe they will be successful at FLC.

Forty-one percent of FLC’s student body is comprised of Indigenous students, which includes 177 Native American tribes and Alaska Native villages, according to the school. FLC offers tuition waivers at undergraduate, graduate and nondegree-seeking levels for enrolled members, or the children of an enrolled member, of a Native American tribal nation or Alaska Native Village recognized by the U.S. federal government.

“The decision is very unfortunate because the court tossed out four decades of precedent that allowed colleges, mainly selective colleges, to pursue the vital societal interest in diversity,” Stritikus said in an interview after the court’s decision.

As of March 2015, 109 out of 577 public four-year universities across the United States reported using affirmative action in their admission process. In Colorado, three universities – University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado College and the University of Denver – reported using affirmative action during their admissions process, according to Ballotpedia.

“Because the Court cannot escape the inevitable truth that race matters in students’ lives, it announces a false promise to save face and appear attuned to reality,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent against the majority opinion. “No one is fooled.”

Striking down affirmative action affects students of color, especially Black and Latino students, and women at a disproportionate level, according to Best Colleges. This has already been seen after Michigan banned race-conscious college admission processes in 2006, where the enrollment of Black students dropped from 7% in 2006 to 4% in 2021.

“Race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent.

The idea of affirmative action began to sink into American society in the 1960s after Executive Order 10925 under former President John F. Kennedy Jr. on March 6, 1961. The order required government contractors to employ the use of affirmative action in hiring and employment practices to ensure they were free of racial biases.

Affirmative action was ruled to be constitutional for college admissions in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978. In Bakke, the court ruled that while making admission decisions purely based on race is unconstitutional, the use of affirmative action to diversify the student body is not inherently unconstitutional.

Studies have shown that affirmative action benefits all students, with a study from the American Council of Education in 2019 finding more diversity leads to more productivity, innovation and cultural competency.

While the decision was disheartening, Stritikus said it is important to remember that the affirmative action ruling will mostly affect schools with competitive admission processes.

“So much attention gets focused on the super-selective schools,” he said. “That’s not where the majority of kids are educated.”

Mina Allen is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez and a student at American University in Washington, D.C. She can be reached at mallen@durangoherald.com.