Team Youngkin: No More Racial Preferences in Higher Ed
Virginia’s public colleges and university must act now to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination on campus, state Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera wrote Saturday in a letter to the institutions’ presidents and governing boards.
Guidera’s letter directed the governing boards of each school to review in their next meeting all practices that could violate federal law, reports The Richmond Times-Dispatch. The letter specifically mentioned the need to end racial preferences in their school’s admissions and hiring practices.
The University of Virginia Board of Visitors is scheduled to have an hour-and-a-half “open session” Friday afternoon. Among several other items, the agenda includes a “discussion with university leadership” on the topic of “test-optional admissions policies.”
Guidera’s order follows a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling restricting the use of racial preferences in admissions and a January a Trump administration executive order reversing more than a dozen previous federal orders and policies.
In a communication with K-12 schools and higher-ed institutions last month, Trump’s Department of Education said that colleges have been engaging in “pervasive and repugnant” race-based preferences in admissions, scholarships, hiring, promotions, housing and other aspects of college life. The schools and colleges had 14 days to align policies with the law or risk losing federal funding.
Virginia Commonwealth University officials have said that the university is “generally aligned” with the letter’s instructions, although in some instances further evaluation is needed, reports the RTD. The College of William & Mary adjusted its admissions policies last year and saw only a minor drop — from 34% to 32% — in the admissions of students of color.
At the University of Virginia, the Board of Visitors in 2020 adopted the recommendations of the Racial Equity Task Force to devote up to $950 million to rectifying historical injustices toward minorities. Programs were enacted to increase not only the undergraduate admission of Blacks and Hispanics but financial incentives to recruit more minority graduate students and faculty. The University greatly expanded its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion bureaucracy with a payroll — depending on how the numbers are counted — of up to $20 million.
Under the banner of “inclusive excellence,” DEI permeated every nook and cranny of the university: hiring and promotions, faculty and staff training, student orientation and programs, and admissions. Although Whites comprise roughly 60% of the Virginia’s population, they fell below 50% in UVA enrollment for the first time this year. Ironically, the percentage of White UVA employees remains much higher than the state average: around 69%.
If the UVA Board follows the pre-published agenda, it will discuss a particularly sensitive admissions-related issue: standardized test scores. UVA scrapped its requirement for students to submit standardized test scores such as SATs and ACTs, a criterion that tended to favor Whites and Asians. The move opened up admissions to students who scored lower scores but who arguably showed promise by overcoming hardship. For a time, the UVA admissions office used what amounted to an “adversity” calculator based upon the school an applicant attended and the neighborhood in which he or she lived.
Racial preferences were justified in part as a counterbalance shown to “legacies” — the disproportionately White offspring of UVA alumni. However, Governor Glenn Youngkin signed a law last year prohibiting public colleges in Virginia from considering legacy status in admissions.
Youngkin has appointed 13 of the 17 members of the UVA Board of Visitors, so it is likely that a solid majority of board members will heed his wishes on the use of racial preferences. But the issue gets complicated very quickly. Since the Supreme Court ruling, university officials committed to the use of racial preferences as a form of social engineering have had almost two years to devise workarounds. One strategy is to identify admissions criteria — geography, income, “disadvantaged” schools — that overlap racial status closely without identifying race or ethnic status explicitly. If applicants can demonstrate they overcame the adversity of their environment, it can be argued, they may be successful in college even if their SATs are lower than average.
Last week, Eric Ramírez-Weaver, chair of the Faculty Senate’s DEI Committee, explored how UVA could comply legally with the Supreme Court ruling and Executive Orders but achieve the same aims through workarounds (my bold):
“I’m speaking to the DEI committee. Some of the issues that had surfaced prior to the recent executive orders involved how new recruiting techniques can be done post the Harvard decision, which now is even more important in light of executive orders on DEI and in fact the dear colleague’s letter from the Department of Ed. I think a very straightforward thing we need to know is how the programs that [Greg Roberts, director of admissions] implemented, which were workarounds in order to promote a diverse class, are now requiring even more rethinking and reconsideration, and what, if anything, are the strategies going forward.”
The March board agenda is jam-packed with potentially controversial issues, so there’s no telling how much time the BoV will be able to devote to racial preferences. But the Board has been increasingly assertive in the past few months, first taking command over the investigation into managerial abuses at the UVA Medical Center, then reclaiming control over Strategic Investment Fund allocations, and most recently stating that the board, not the president, is in charge of setting University policy.
If you’re looking for fireworks, there’s no need to wait until the 4th of July.
James A. Bacon is the founder of Bacon’s Rebellion and a contributing editor with The Jefferson Council.
