LeMoyne-Owen president calls affirmative action ruling ‘disheartening’

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - A decades-long policy allowing colleges to use race as a determining factor in college admissions has been struck down.

The affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard were struck down Thursday.

The Supreme Court ruled both programs violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

Many colleges are calling Thursday’s decision a major blow to efforts to diversify their college campuses.

In the 1960s and 1970s, several colleges developed affirmative action plans to address the fact that many predominantly white schools struggled to attract people from historically disadvantaged and underrepresented communities.

The interim president of LeMoyne-Owen College, a historically Black college, calls Thursday’s ruling disheartening but adds it may actually be beneficial for his campus.

“The decision that the high court rendered yesterday probably set educational access back easily 60 years,” said Christopher Davis, “but what I anticipate... I anticipate we will see an increase in applicants in light of the decision, because let’s face it, particularly those of us that were raised in the South, there is some grandmother or some grandfather at home right now saying to some child, ‘Don’t you want to be anywhere where you are not wanted or welcome?”

The National Civil Rights Museum released a statement on Thursday’s ruling, saying “The decision creates serious challenges to bring racial equity to the nation’s institutions of higher education and undermines the decades of work that has been done to address systemic racism in our schools.”

Rhodes College also issued the following statement:

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