Columbia Law School removed a questionable admission requirement for transfer students on Monday after The Washington Free Beacon inquired that the application process appeared to have a portion used to bypass the U.S. Supreme Court ban on affirmative action.
Just before SCOTUS broke for recesses at the end of June, a landmark ruling from the court said race-based admissions programs at Harvard University violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the University of North Carolina programs violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The decision now profoundly affects the admissions processes at universities across the country.
But despite the nation’s highest court eliminating universities’ ability to accept applicants based on race, some have indicated that they would search for a loophole in the ruling.
On Monday morning, Columbia Law School’s admissions page reportedly said all transfer applicants must submit a 90-second video statement addressing random questions “to provide the Admissions Committee with additional insight into their personal strengths,” according to the Free Beacon.
But the video statements from transfer applicants only appeared on the law school’s website after the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action policies.
Columbia’s decision “has all the hallmarks of a willful effort to evade the requirements of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act,” Edward Blum, the founder of the nonprofit legal advocacy organization Students for Fair Admissions, told the Free Beacon. “What is a 90-second video supposed to legitimately convey that a written statement could not?”
Blum’s organization took the legal challenge to the nation’s highest court after accusing the so-called elite universities of unfairly factoring race into their admissions processes. The group pointed to the high test scores of rejected Asian American and white applicants. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled against Harvard and UNC.
Following the Free Beacon’s report, a law school spokesman claimed the application’s video statement component — which was first introduced before the Supreme Court ruling in a pilot program — had been a misunderstanding. By 6:00 p.m. on Monday, officials removed the portion from the school’s website.
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“Video statements will not be required as part of the Fall 2024 J.D. application when it becomes available in September,” the law school told the Free Beacon in a statement. “It was inadvertently listed on the Law School’s website and has since been corrected.”
Campus Reform, a watchdog group, reported that some colleges have drummed up other ways to inquire about a students’ race, including Sarah Lawrence College in New York, which asks applicants how the SCOTUS ruling has personally affected them, according to the New York Post.