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The Supreme Court’s decision to ban affirmative action in higher education will have significant yet unknowable impacts on race-conscious college admission practices. Regardless, Sarah Lawrence College remains committed to the importance of a diverse community and to a holistic admissions process.
Prior to oral arguments in the cases at hand (Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina), Sarah Lawrence, with 36 other private liberal arts colleges, submitted a “friend of the court” brief enumerating the previously accepted legal and constitutional arguments in favor of race-conscious admissions practices. And, as a member of the Liberal Arts Colleges Racial Equity Leadership Alliance (LACRELA), in May 2023 Sarah Lawrence President Cristle Collins Judd and 25 other college presidents signed an open letter prioritizing diversity in liberal arts colleges and defending long-standing recruitment and admissions practices.
The admissions team at Sarah Lawrence College has never relied solely on one single factor when admitting students, and we will continue to ensure that we are recruiting and enrolling as diverse a class as possible in support of our mission, which remains unchanged: to graduate world citizens who are diverse in every definition of the word, who take intellectual and creative risks, who cross disciplinary boundaries, and who are able to sustain exceptional academic discipline within a framework of humanistic values and concern for community.