When I grow up, I want to go to college, such as Harvard, Yale, or Cornell. I haven’t decided which one yet since I’ve got a long way to go, but I know that one day, I’ll be in college getting the best education I can. However, for minority students like me, that dream is getting harder and harder. That’s why I believe that to address the issue of missing diversity in school, we should remove legacy preference.
On July 23, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court abolished affirmative action in all schools. I believe that affirmative action was unjustly taken away and that we should bring it back to colleges. Throughout history, minority families have gotten less financial support from the government. According to Michelle Tlaseca Verde, in a Ted Talk about Affirmative Action, around the time when legacy admissions were enacted, only 60% of black people got Social Security benefits, which means that they didn’t have the money to give their children the opportunities that their majority counterparts could, such as college training. The fact that they didn’t get something as vital as social security means that the government was obviously overlooking them and their needs.
Then, the removal of affirmative action financially affected minority families. According to the Educative Data Initiative, black families had 188% more in student debt than their white counterparts. That is a significant negative impact.
Even if we have plenty of protesting and voting to get affirmative action back, it will be years before another case about it reaches the Supreme Court. But this doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can do to bring back diversity in schools. One temporary solution would be removing legacy preference. Legacy preference means that if your parents went to the college you apply to, you’ll have a better chance of getting in. This is incredibly unfair; some students who are much less deserving than their counterparts can still get accepted into college because of their parents. According to the Hechinger Report, Harvard legacy students were accepted at a rate of 33.6, while non-legacy students were accepted at a rate of 5.9. Do you see the difference between those numbers? How could two groups of students who had similar credentials be picked out just because of where their parents went? Another reason this is unfair is that most minority students weren’t given the chance to get into those colleges before, no matter how smart they were, since the ban on discrimination came after legacy admissions were created. Also, legacy preference was enacted during Jim Crow laws, when black students weren’t even allowed at some colleges. How were they supposed to get into college when they weren’t allowed?
I believe that ending legacy preference would help fix the problem of insufficient diversity in colleges because if we removed legacy preference, then not only would more seats be opened to students more deserving of it, but it would also remove the gap between students whose parents weren’t given the resources to go to that college and students whose parents were.
In conclusion, to solve the lack of diversity in schools after affirmative action was removed, colleges should remove legacy preference to ensure that everyone has an equal playing ground. When I grow up, I want to go to college, but without change, I may not have a chance.
