Ambivalence

Ambivalence can be described as being of two minds. And that is how one can characterize my response to the Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down race-based affirmative action. Is the Constitution color blind, obliging government to ignore circumstances of race? Or, is the Constitution a document compelling government to put its thumb on the scales to counter-balance racial injustice? Was it time for a two-dimensional definition of inequality (race-based) to give way to more sophisticated ways of understanding inequity? Was it a mistake to cast aside a system that gave black and brown kids a shot at elite colleges that might otherwise be denied in favor of white and Asian students? It's really hard to say. 

That elite college thing is the thing, though, isn't it. I've worked for many years with students applying for college, and many of them are focused on acceptance into one of those elite colleges. Casting aside the merits of that pursuit of the prized sheepskin from that prized institution, I've come to know that the process by which one gets admitted is a game. And games can be gamed. And now the rules for the game will be in flux for at least a little bit until a new equilibrium is reached, an equilibrium that offers a silver bullet combination of essays and/or GPA and/or test scores and/or life experience that brings home the prize. Frank Bruni's take on the game of admissions remains a masterpiece in understanding this realm, a realm whose rules the Supreme Court has temporarily scrambled as one would the image on an Etch-a-Sketch. 

One major reason for pause, though, is what we have seen in the year since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Many of those who cheered the Supreme Court's decision to reverse that controversial half-century-old precedent did so because they hailed the promise of letting the issue of abortion return to the States where it supposedly belongs. What we received is Constitutional cacophony. What is legal in what state and when? What governor vetoed? What veto got overridden? What state supreme court ruled on what? What will be dealt with via state executive order vs. state law vs. amendment to state constitution? And then will abortion become a civil or a criminal issue? Confusion and noise have prevailed above all else on that issue in the year since. And we will see that happen with college's attempts to create or maintain diversity on their campuses. Can a college cultivate a student body that is diverse? And if it can, what form will that diversity take? I guess it will depend on the state in which the college is functioning. I'm sure that will add another layer of complexity to the game of college admissions, creating a longer limbo until we arrive at the game's new and not-entirely-equitable equilibrium.