Supreme Decision

 When the Supreme Court recently announced its decision to reverse affirmative action, my heart deflated with a rush of emotions: disappointment, hurt, fear, anger. How can we still be fighting about the legitimacy of providing opportunity and community in higher education, so it reflects the tapestry of our nation?

As someone who works closely with marginalized groups in Gateway Cities, I regularly witness the promise and talent of both our college-age mentors and middle and high school mentees. As part of a wide coalition of organizations focused on finding ways to not squander that potential, we provide guidance to individuals facing significant obstacles in their pursuit of education and training. But these efforts aren’t enough. Heartbreakingly, I see many young people fall by the wayside. I worry that without measured thoughtfulness on society’s part, we will see more left behind as the dust settles from the Supreme Court decision.

Throwing out affirmative action makes helping young people even harder and disregards the deep and ongoing inequities faced by students of color and others. Although not a panacea, affirmative action sought to level the playing field and address historical injustices with the aim of fostering diversity on college campuses. Without it, we must intensify our efforts to identify and support additional means to do so, such as increasing funding in federal, state, and local budgets for social programs and nonprofit initiatives to address and prevent barriers to successful higher education.

The Healey administration has made steps in the right direction, recently expanding college and career readiness tools and forming the Advisory Council for the Advancement of Representation in Education. Composed of education leaders, civil rights advocates, students, and others, the council needs to live up to its name and advance the goal of making college more accessible to students of color.

Growing up in Los Angeles, my neighborhood battled daily with poverty, drugs, and violence. Coming from a single-parent family, I (like so many others in my community and across the nation) struggled to even imagine walking across a stage to receive a college diploma. I am not sure if affirmative action played a key role in my being accepted to a small liberal arts college on the East Coast, but I do know that the experience was transformative for me. I want this transformative action for all young people. My education introduced me to leadership skills, professional networks, and a passion for helping others that enriched my life and led me to launch a nonprofit designed to lift others.

We must sincerely support initiatives and programs that provide marginalized students with the tools they need to succeed, such as access to education, paid internships, sustained academic and financial supports, professional networks, and limited debt. Creating the council offers the opportunity to address those inequities in a powerful way, but our leaders need to follow through.

While admissions offices can no longer rely on affirmative action, nothing stops colleges and universities from supporting diverse students seeking college and career pathways. They can create transparent and holistic admissions processes that consider various aspects of applicants’ backgrounds and experiences—including grades, curriculum, work experience, activities, socioeconomic backdrops, family circumstances, and character-forming challenges—so each applicant’s unique contributions can be fully appreciated. They can actively reach out to marginalized communities by creating partnerships with programs and organizations working with disadvantaged communities such as Gateway Cities like New Bedford, Lawrence, and Fall River, where poverty and under-resourced school systems hold students back.

Coaching4Change is an example of such partnership as we work closely with colleges to create paid internships for their students to become mentors in K-12 school systems in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. We partner with dozens of colleges to match diverse college mentors with schools. Students who have mentors, especially mentors who look like they do, do better academically and stay in school. Studies show that mentoring positively influences education experiences, increasing young people's chances of completing high school, staying away from substance misuse, holding leadership positions, participating in extracurricular activities, and going on to higher education. Yet, one in three young people report not having access to a mentor, and it is projected that more than 16 million young people, including 9 million considered at risk, will go through life without connecting with a mentor, leaving their chances for leading successful lives severely diminished.

As a society, we must get serious about funding the social programs and nonprofits working in areas to raise up students and their communities not just for the moment but for life–including health care, education, training, mentoring, literacy, housing, food insecurity, addiction, and violence reduction. The passion of the people behind these organizations inspires me, and the work they do fills me with hope.

Reversing affirmative action is a setback, but going backward is not an option. We must focus on the solutions to move forward. In order to address the world’s most pressing needs, society requires diverse leaders able to work together and understand the perspectives of others. We need people whose backgrounds and experiences reflect those of our nation. We must rise to the challenge.