Part I looks at the implementation of the Harvard and UNC Supreme Court decisions, and Part II will examine the current status of the “Do Better Cornell” demands stemming from the Summer of 2020. Part III will examine the status of a Cornell anti-racism center.
On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court announced an end to affirmative action in college admissions, and President Pollack promised that “Cornell will follow the law,” but who decides how to implement the Court’s admonitions and will those requirements actually be honored?
On Paper
Unlike Harvard, Cornell has a separate admissions process in each of its colleges. Article 14 Section 2 of the Cornell University Bylaws gives each college faculty jurisdiction “Subject to the authority of the University Faculty on all matters affecting general educational policy,” over “the entrance requirements for its own students.”
The Supreme Court described how Harvard’s 40-member Admissions Committee sat together to decide who would be accepted in its class of 1,950 offers. After the committee picked these applicants, the accepted students would then decide whether to attend Harvard, yielding a class of around 1,200 entering students.
In contrast, each college at Cornell has a separate application process, eligibility criteria, admissions decisions, and wait lists. A central Office of Admissions and Financial Aid helps with logistics, but each college runs its own show.
RELATED: Cornell should take the lead with honest, open dialogue after the end of affirmative action.
As a result of college-based admissions, diversity is baked into Cornell. A good Dyson student must have some quantitative skills. A good CALS student needs more STEM skills. A good Hotelie needs good people skills. In ILR, the admissions process can balance future labor organizers with future HR professionals.
The diverse educational environment comes from putting these together on one campus. The undergraduate diversity is magnified at the graduate level with each academic field making its own admissions decisions.
Finally, the diversity of society enhances this process. Ten percent of undergraduates, 48% of graduate students, and 59% of postdocs self-identify as “multiracial.”
On paper, if the individual colleges ignored race in admissions, Cornell would already be the most diverse university in the Ivy League.
But would the accepted students come to Cornell, and would they be welcomed into the student body? Survey data from 2018 shows that student sentiment varies with race:
Overall, 27% of undergraduates were dissatisfied with the sense of community at the university, while 42% of black students were dissatisfied. Such social factors are beyond the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court or the college faculties.
Historic Precedents
Cornell’s long, difficult, history of educating women demonstrates the roadblocks to equality. Although Ezra Cornell proclaimed “any person, any study” on opening day, many factors limited female enrollment and participation in student life.
Cornell felt the need to provide separate, appropriate housing for women, starting with the opening of Sage Hall in 1875. As soon as Cornell required women to live in the dorms, Cornell started to allocate available dorm rooms to colleges, which in turn limited the number of women accepted by each college.
In 1972, when the dorms (other than Balch) became co-ed, these artificial limits were lifted and the percentage of female students steadily grew to the current 54% of undergraduates. But in the early 1970s, the artificial limit on the number of women accepted to the Arts College meant that the mean SAT scores of the women were significantly higher than the men.1
Even without the dorm requirement, the Vet School feared that women tend to treat small animals and pets rather than horses or cows. So, for many years, there was an unspoken quota of only three (not “3 percent”) women in each incoming vet class.2
Women had a separate on-campus life as well. When Willard Straight Hall opened in 1925, men entered through the main entrance to the North while women were restricted to the smaller door to the South, and women could only use the separate lounge areas designed for them on the south end of the building.
Women had a separate student government, and the Sun had a separate women’s page with a separate editorial staff. Male honorary societies, Quill & Dagger and Sphinx Head, boasted impressive buildings, while the women had no meeting house for Mortar Board, the then-female honorary.3
As for social life, “anti-coedism” dictated that male Cornell students would date students from Wells College, Elmira College, or Ithaca College rather than female Cornell students. Some male students refused to talk to women while on campus.4
All of that history is behind us, but it shows how social forces can hinder a policy change made on paper.
Cornell can steer students from designated racial groups to apply or stay away from Cornell. For example, the content of the web site, the financial aid policies and even separated housing, student organizations, and graduation ceremonies influence whether people of certain racial groups will come or remain as students.
How Will The Decision Be Made?
Knowing that the Supreme Court would decide Harvard and UNC this term, President Pollack appointed a special 15-member Admissions Task Force in November 2022. The Dean of the Faculty then appointed an Admissions Advisory Group (AAG) consisting of four faculty members. The AAG is claired by Alan Mathios, who is already a member of the Task Force.
Resorting to a task force and an AAG—intentionally or otherwise—keeps the debate closely held and not open to community scrutiny. After all, if “Cornell will follow the law,” would it not make sense to reach an implementation strategy in an open and transparent manner?
The Task Force charge stated, “In order to use the work of this committee as soon as the next recruiting cycle, we would request an interim report no later than the end of the current academic year (May 31, 2023), and a final report no later than Aug. 31, 2023.” The Review reached out to Cornell about the interim report, but Media Relations declined to provide any information.
In addition to the faculty, which historically has the final say on admissions policy, in 2018, Cornell added a Vice Provost of Enrollment—Jonathan Burdick—as a high-level administrator to “strategically position … the university to achieve its institutional goals and priorities, while supporting and strengthening specific enrollment-related needs and goals of the colleges and schools.” Burdick has been a member of the Admissions Task Force since its inception.
The removal of race as a criteria for admissions is such a high-profile matter that President Pollack has raised this issue with the Board of Trustees and will continue to consult them on this subject. However, the full Board will not meet again until October.
Again, even though Cornell has ended affirmative action on paper, the realities of the campus will have a much bigger influence on the change than any abstract words alone.
The Definition of “DEI”
Following the Supreme Court’s decision, President Pollack reaffirmed Cornell’s commitment to “diversity” without defining that term. Yet, the Institutional Goals for “Cornell’s Vision and Goals for Diversity” promise to “Continually improve on our demographic diversity.”
In contrast, the Supreme Court decisions in Grutter and Harvard seem to seek to improve the educational environment by expanding “viewpoint diversity.”
Cornell’s statistical measures focused upon just measures of demographic diversity to map progress of its diversity efforts. In contrast, the Daily Princetonian conducts an annual survey of students to measure their political outlook. Cornell should conduct similar surveys with the goal of making our campus more welcoming to conservative and middle-of-the-road students.
Further, Justice Jackson, in her UNC dissent, is in effect arguing for a racial admission preference as reparations for past harms visited upon Black Americans generally. In response, Chief Justice Roberts argued that schools can consider race to compensate for the hardship that individual students faced:
“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination.”
Decision makers at all levels of Cornell should adopt as a mantra the words of Justice Roberts from a 2007 case: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating based on race.”
Part II will examine the current status of the “Do Better Cornell” demands stemming from the Summer of 2020.
- Conable, C., Women at Cornell: The Myth of Equal Education, Cornell University Press (1977) at 112.
- Conable at 133.
- Conable at 118.
- Conable at 117.
