By Scott Graber
It is Monday and I’m in Williamstown, Mass. Susan and I are sitting outside the Williams College Inn, in black-painted Adirondack chairs, listening to Wanda Houston sing “Midnight Train To Georgia.”
“I know he’s leaving (leaving)
On that midnight train to Georgia
(leaving on that train to Georgia)
Said he’s going back to find
(going back to find)
A simpler place and time
(And when he takes that ride guess who’s gonna sit right by his side)”
As Ms. Houston sings in the inimical style of Gladys Knight, my eyes settle on a group of young women who are sitting nearby but seem too excited to listen to lyrics that probably have no real meaning in their young, mostly un-lived lives.
One of these women wears a jersey that says, Williams Lacrosse; and they are all well-muscled. Athletes I think. Based upon these observations, I suppose they play on the varsity lacrosse team — and are on campus early getting ready for the forthcoming season.
These five women have an air of expectation that underscores the fact that they are enrolled at a very good school that will provide a springboard for a very good life.
The women at Williams are some of the smartest in the country, having at least a 4.07 GPA in high school and being part of only 12% (of thousands that applied) who were accepted by the College.
Williams is small, but well-endowed, having a $3.5 billion endowment — the sixth largest endowment in the United States.
If this number is divided by the student body, each Williams student is backed up by $2 million in endowment money. With this kind of loot Williams can afford an Oxford style education that pairs each student with another student and allows them to meet with their primary professor once each week.
Williams currently has a demographic profile that shows 49% white, 13% Asian, 12% Hispanic and 4.6% Black. Williams also acknowledges 86 “legacy students” (7%) and, of course, would like to increase the number Black students that it enrolls.
All of which brings me round to the Supreme Court’s recent, 6-3 decision that Harvard (and Chapel Hill) cannot use race as a basis for choosing one applicant over another when it comes to college admissions.
But Judge Roberts also wrote,
“Nothing in this Opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise, …”
So, I suppose, an applicant could write that he was stopped by a big-bellied, donut-eating deputy who believed a burnt-out tail-light is worthy of detention. He could say that he panicked (unpaid parking violations?) and was then “tased” as he made an unsuccessful dash through a Jack In The Box parking lot.
The verb “considering” seems to say that the admissions officer can award points for this traumatic experience but can’t base his opinion on race alone.
“Universities,” Roberts wrote, “may not simply establish through applicant essays or other means (what) we hold unlawful today.”
On the one hand the admissions officer can consider the essay even if is centered on racial discrimination. But can’t use it as a penultimate, peremptory trump card that pardons all other deficiencies.
“You know what; I really liked his essay. And yes it figured into my decision,” an admissions officer might testify. “But it wasn’t the single, over-riding basis for my decision.”
Many years ago we here in Beaufort had a wonderfully insightful and erudite Master In Equity named Tommy Kemmerlin. Judge Kemmerlin was also outspoken, direct and did not suffer fools or tolerate mendacity in his small courtroom. If Tommy Kemmerlin was still alive, and had read the Roberts opinion in this case, he would have thrown his massive head back and bellowed,
“This ruling is unbelievable and, by the way, it is unenforceable! There is no way of measuring what value the admissions people put on this essay. There is no way of knowing what was going on in the man’s head when he weighed this application. …”
The Williams College people say they will still apply their “holistic approach” to the applications that they receive. They also say they will look to the Department of Education for guidance on how to reconcile what the Supreme Court has written.
But absent some kind of lie detecting device; some intent detecting machine, I don’t know how this opinion can be reconciled.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
