Lack of progress in admissions lawsuit against UNC

In November 2014, a lawsuit filed against UNC and Harvard University by the Students for Fair Admissions declared UNC’s undergraduate admissions was performing racially and ethnically discriminatory policies in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Students for Fair Admissions is a nonprofit organization that says a student’s race and ethnicity should not be considered in competitive university admissions.

The suit said white and Asian-American applicants are at a disadvantage, and UNC has a preference for minority students in admissions.

“It is not a lack of non-academic achievement that is keeping them from securing admission. It is UNC-Chapel Hill’s dominant use of racial preferences to their detriment,” the suit states.

Edward Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions, said the lawsuit has not progressed much since it was originally filed.

“There’s not much to report,” Blum said.

“What happened after the lawsuit was filed was the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear another affirmative action lawsuit, and UNC and Harvard argued that the outcome of that particular lawsuit could affect their own lawsuits. So they asked the courts to slow the process down until the Supreme Court ruled in Fisher v. University of Texas.”

Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin was a Supreme Court case in which high school senior Abigail Fisher, who is white, sued the University of Texas at Austin for denying her admission on the basis of her race.

UNC spokesperson Jim Gregory said the University filed a friend of the court brief — an application for more information from an outside source — with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Fisher vs. University of Texas at Austin on Oct. 30 because the ruling in this case will likely impact UNC’s suit.

“We believe the Supreme Court should preserve and reinforce the standards it formulated in earlier cases and should reject efforts to change the law, disguised as arguments about the way in which defined strict scrutiny standards are to be applied in admissions decisions,” Gregory said.

Chapel Hill High School senior Hillary Lin, who is Asian, plans on applying to UNC and said she believes UNC’s admission practices will make it more difficult for her and other Asian students to be admitted.

“It definitely makes it harder for Asian students to be admitted,” Lin said.

“Taking race itself into consideration is just wrong.”

Lin said universities should instead further examine people’s backgrounds and current living situations in the admission process.

“Put each person’s backgrounds into consideration if possible,” Lin said.

“Even though it might take a lot more time, that’s necessary to be done because everyone has their own unique situations.”

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