Did you know that affirmative action affects all people? This includes people who aren’t minorities.

With the exception of eight states, the entirety of America allows colleges and universities the freedom to take affirmative action into account when making decisions within the admissions process.

This means that people who may have been accepted originally could have someone who is within a minority race chosen over them, based partly on the matter of each individual’s ethnicity. This begs the question: is it fair?

This question rose to greater prominence in the media after the recent case of Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Harvard was accused of practicing racial discrimination within its affirmative action programs, specifically against Asian Americans.

Harvard was sued for violating the Constitution. Despite Harvard technically being a private university, it gets its funding from the government, meaning it is subject to necessary consequences under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

This section states that racial discrimination isn’t allowed within institutions that receive federal funding.

However, the exception to this rule is when decisions made on the basis of race are more so tailored to the common good rather than based on inherent bias.

This means that, on Harvard’s side of the argument, they must prove their race-based admissions align with Title VI; at which they apparently succeeded, given that both the lower and appellate courts ruled in favor of Harvard.

But this begs the question: what does this mean for future use of affirmative action?

Over its lifetime, the court has been forced to make many decisions like this.

While affirmative action has managed to be upheld each time, the court has begun to change.

Mainly it’s become more conservative, so the representatives are more likely to side with older ways of doing things, meaning the potential elimination of affirmative action.

And with this case, the court has begun talks of banning affirmative action. In fact, it is expected that they will ignore popular opinion and do so.

A decision of this magnitude could substantially change higher education, primarily due to the potential greater lack of minority students attending these schools.

It even affects people such as Central’s own students, especially those of whom will go to college soon.