Last semester, The Tufts Tribune was informed that the Africana Center was not given its “class list” for the incoming 2029 undergraduate class, despite reports that other Division of Student Diversity and Inclusion (DSDI) centers received theirs, raising concerns of unfair treatment by the university.
Tufts’s Executive Director of Media Relations Patrick Collins later clarified the situation, making public for the first time that, “In light of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling on affirmative action in admissions, ensuing federal guidance, and ongoing adherence to best practices for the inclusion of all students, the schools this summer decided to end the practice of sharing lists with centers, departments, and other groups.” Collins also shed some light on the indicated discrepancies between centers, noting that “It’s possible that some entities received preliminary lists before the decision was finalized, but that will no longer occur with our new practice.”
Tufts University’s eight DSDI centers aim to create spaces for students to explore their identities while offering leadership opportunities, discussions of diversity, and social justice within and outside of the school. In the past, Tufts has used Common App demographic information to identify students whose identities align with a certain DSDI center, and sent email lists of those students to their respective centers.
Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard were the 2023 Supreme Court cases that ultimately ended affirmative action practices in college admissions. Students for Fair Admissions outlined that colleges and universities’ use of race as a factor in college admissions violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In the wake of the decisions, Columbia University’s incoming class saw a drop from 20% Black student enrollment to 12% between the classes of 2027 and 2028. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) saw a 9% drop in first-year Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous student enrollment.
Here at Tufts, there was a drop from 7.3% Black or African American students to 4.7% between its 2027 and 2028 classes. Students of color dropped from 50% to 43.9% that same year.
Several students articulated how vital the DSDI centers have been to their Tufts experience. Hunter Niimi (‘27) explained how “They have personally helped me to meet many of my friends who have similar upbringings and identities as me, especially in areas like engineering where I often do not get to see that.” Vice President of Internal Affairs for Tufts African American Foundations & Roots Organization (AAFRO) Jerrica Arnett (‘27) furthered this, expressing that “DSDI centers are part of the thing that drew me to Tufts in the first place, and it’s very important that they thrive.”
Tools like class lists are foundational to the centers’ ability to reach potentially interested students. Arnett told the Tribune that, “From my understanding, class lists are supposed to be used as a tool for the DSDI centers to really know their base, know their community, know who they’re trying to outreach to.”
Students who have reported benefiting from DSDI centers raised concerns that these procedural changes could diminish the perceived efficacy of the centers at Tufts and consequently cause a decrease in donations. Niimi explains: “The donors want to see the results [and] outcomes of what the students do after [their DSDI] program. Therefore if the centers are not able to [or] have a harder time marketing these programs to certain student demographics then it could be perceived by donors that the programs aren’t really working and discourage them from donating again.”
Per Collins’s statement to the Tribune, Tufts is adapting the way its DSDI programs reach incoming students. “Going forward, the schools will adopt an opt-in system by which admitted/enrolling students will be asked which entities at Tufts they want to hear from,” Collins wrote. The Tribune reached out to several DSDI centers, all of which declined to comment.
In the years since the 2023 Supreme Court rulings, attention has remained largely focused on their repercussions for admissions. Today, we can observe the ways that the court’s decisions are now beginning to affect life after admission for college students. We can measure these changes in statistics, but beneath these numbers one may see social landscapes shift. It is moments of change like this that the dividing curtain between public policy and our personal lives rises, giving us the rare chance to see their steps in tandem.
Photo by Jack Smart