By Jamie Lucke
Kentucky Lantern
The day before Cheryl Nixon became Berea College’s 10th and first woman president, the U.S. Supreme Court renounced one of the principles on which the small but revered Christian, liberal arts college is built.
“Our founder, the Rev. John Fee, was a staunch abolitionist and believed that there was a debt to be repaid to the newly freed African Americans,” outgoing President Lyle Roelofs explained during an event in which he handed off a symbolic wooden mace to his successor (who later quipped to media, that, yes, she is President Nixon, though no relation to the other one).
Both educators used the occasion to reaffirm Berea’s commitment to “interracial education” in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision striking down race-conscious college admissions.
Outgoing Berea College President Lyle Roelofs passes a symbolic wooden mace to new President Cheryl Nixon (Berea College photo)
That 174-year commitment, Roelofs said, brings “the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution into play” because of the “nexus between our spiritual commitments at Berea College and the mission we pursue.”
Similarly, 56 Catholic schools, led by Georgetown University, filed a brief last year supporting affirmative action and asserting that racially diverse admissions are “inextricably intertwined” with their religious foundations.
The Supreme Court did allow the nation’s military academies to continue considering the race of would-be students, an exemption that U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger, called “outright grotesque.” Crow, a Colorado Democrat, tweeted: “The court is saying diversity shouldn’t matter, EXCEPT when deciding who can fight and die for our country — reinforcing the notion that these communities can sacrifice for America but not be full participants in every other way.”
Berea’s Nixon — a scholar of the 19th century novel and most recently provost and vice president for academic affairs at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado — voiced disappointment at the court’s decision and “what it may mean for the future.”
In practice, however, the ruling will have little effect on Berea, predicted Roeloffs and Nixon, because the college already has a process geared toward admitting those who face social and economic hardships based on a “holistic” review of applicants’ life stories — the sort of consideration endorsed by Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, who said admissions officers still can consider what applicants write about their personal struggles related to race.
Said Nixon: “We serve only those students who cannot afford a high quality residential college education. . .None of our students can be described as persons of privilege. Very few are children of alumni and donors. Indeed, more than half of last year’s graduating class were the first ever college graduates from their families.”
Berea can do this, while charging no tuition, because it has a small enrollment (445 freshmen entering come fall) and a large endowment (more than $1.4 billion).
The challenges of building diverse student bodies will be more difficult for selective flagship universities and larger private schools, Roelofs and Nixon acknowledged.
Even Berea’s own history, steeped in social justice, attests to the challenges of building diversity.
“We had a 50-50 community in the late 19th century,” Roelofs told me in a conversation after the ceremony.
In 1904, the Kentucky legislature specifically targeted Berea and outlawed racial integration in education. Berea lost appeals in state and federal courts. Siding with Berea, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, son of Kentucky slaveholders, issued a vigorous dissent, deploring “prejudice of race.”
Not until 1950, when Kentucky’s shameful Day Act was amended, did Black students return to Berea.
It was not easy for them, said Roelofs. And, more than 70 years later, Berea has yet to regain equality in enrollment. Non-white students make up 42% of Berea’s enrollment; 30% of the next freshman class identify as Black or African American.
“An institution that’s been all white for 50 years develops all these patterns that people don’t question, don’t think about,” said Roelofs. “It takes courageous people, some of whom are on our board of trustees now, to come in and do their part. They probably think, ‘Why do I have to do this? Why don’t these white people around me take this on?’ It’s hard.”
Roelofs noted that Black enrollment dropped in both the University of California system and University of Michigan after those states banned affirmative action in admissions.
At the center of this controversy are about 100 selective schools. A diploma from many of them is a ticket into the upper ranks of business and government and into medical and other professional schools. These “elite” institutions remain free to give preferential treatment to “legacies” — applicants whose parents and grandparents are alumni or donors.
In fact, it all feels a bit removed from the lives of many young Kentuckians, who must weigh whether they can afford any college at all.
Enrollment in higher education is in decline nationally and in Kentucky — in no small part because many question whether the debt incurred to finance ever-rising tuition justifies the expected return.
That should worry everyone because educational opportunity has long been the door to economic advancement and good citizenship.
Berea’s new President Nixon was right when she said the nation needs Berea’s values “more than ever.”
Jamie Lucke is editor of The Kentucky Lantern.
