My group’s project is centered around major Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action throughout history. We want to know how our respective college communities have responded to those decisions and how they have discussed race in the context of college admissions.
This week, my group settled on the time period to look at when we are documenting our sources: from 1978 to 2023. 1978 is the year when the first major Supreme Court decision on affirmative action took place (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke). Some members of my group might be focusing on the earlier part of the time period, while others might be focusing on the latter part. Professor Serrano suggested that we as a group aim to “offer insight to various key moments in this 50-year spread due to each school’s identity and availability of digitized resources.”
In terms of the type of sources, my group had already decided to focus on student publications while also looking for sources published by college administrations. Amherst College’s student newspaper, The Amherst Student, was not available online, so I contacted Amherst College Archives and Special Collections. They shared with me PDFs of all volumes from 1978 to 2014. 2014 is the most recent one that they have digitized, but I was able to find the rest of the issues I needed on Issuu. While I am still in the process of pulling relevant articles, I already found one such article. Volume CXXXIII (published on September 10, 2003) of The Amherst Student includes an article titled “Supreme Court Opposes Point-Based College Admission Process,” which is a commentary on Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger.
I also looked at the Amherst College Admission Office’s annual reports to secondary schools. Each of these reports includes the number of admitted students who belong to racial minority groups. I am planning to use this source and see if I can find a meaningful correlation between affirmative action policies and the diversity of Amherst College’s student body.
Lastly, I looked at the Amherst College Affirmative Action Committee Records (1972-1997). The role of the Committee was to create an inclusive and equitable work environment for Amherst College’s faculty and staff. There were subcommittees on LGBTQ rights, sexual harassment, disability, and so on, but there was nothing about race or admission policies. I am planning to research a bit more to see if there was another committee or department that oversaw affirmative action, as in the consideration of race in the college admission process.
