Stacia L. Brown

I didn’t attend what would be considered a competitive university. It was never an ambition of mine to do so. I just wanted to go somewhere artsy and far away. But my educational achievement started flagging early, in 6th grade, and frankly, it’s a wonder I recovered enough ground by my junior and senior years of high school to apply to four-year colleges at all. I graduated with a 2.7 GPA, subpar SAT scores and no extracurricular resume to speak of; I would’ve been lucky to be accepted anywhere.

Because of this background, the discourse on affirmative action in higher education hasn’t been one in which I’ve had much investment. I wasn’t going to be applying to colleges where Black and Brown students were underrepresented. I was most likely to attend one where we were over-indexed: a state school, a community college, a non-competitive private institution incentivized to admit a high number of non-residential, part-time, local students of color, for whatever funding and endowment benefits that might be able to provide. Race wouldn’t have factored into my admission, anyway — at least not as a basis for exclusion.

In fact, I did attend a small, private college. It admitted me at the last minute when a (non-academic) scholarship elsewhere fell through. I’d applied to this school as a safety; at 45 minutes away from home, it was the closest I was willing to apply and I’d hoped not to have to attend because of its short distance.

In the end, it was my only option. And in the end, it was the right place for me.

Trinity Washington University (still known by its original name, Trinity College, when I was a student there) was founded in 1897 as the nation’s first Catholic liberal arts college for women. Obviously, it was predominantly white then and remained so for many years, its student body consisting mostly of middle-class white women until the 1980s.

Its demographics have flipped considerably since then. Like many colleges initially founded to serve marginalized groups, enrollment dipped at Trinity when the margins widened. Access to more competitive co-ed institutions meant less demand for an all-women’s experience. (The same enrollment dips can be observed at HBCUs post-desegregation.) And it should also be noted that white women seeking admission to those competitive, predominantly white co-ed colleges significantly benefitted from affirmative action policy.

Trinity, under the leadership of a new president, Patricia McGuire (who was there when I enrolled in 1997 and still serves as president of the university now) responded to that late 1980s decrease in enrollment by pivoting its recruitment strategies to include more active courting of students from D.C.’s public schools and working women with a desire to begin or return to college study. As a result, the school attracted a markedly more diverse population. So diverse in fact, that by 2020, its student body was 95% comprised of persons of color, with 65% of those being Black and 30% being Latina/x. Eighty percent of students qualify for Pell Grants.

Today the school is designated by the U.S. Department of Education as a Minority Serving Institution (MSI) and a Predominantly Black Institution (PBI) and, more recently, as an emerging Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). It’s one of few schools in the nation to hold all three distinctions. Despite the addition of a co-ed school of education decades ago, ninety-four percent of the student body is still comprised of women.

I received a quality education at Trinity. Living on campus for 3.5 years was foundational to my coming of age experience. I was introduced to feminist study there. My understanding of the world around me — and of the city surrounding us — broadened. And over the years, holding a degree from the institution has opened professional doors what would’ve otherwise been closed. This is to say: I doubt I’ve ever had an employer scan to the education section of my resume and thumb their nose at the name of the school that conferred my degree. They were, instead, looking to confirm that I had a degree at all. I went into tens of thousands of dollars to attain it, as I would have at any other school that would’ve admitted me, as I had zero out-of-pocket tuition funds to contribute and no hope of an academic or merit-based financial assistance.

Today, as we reckon with yet another regressive Supreme Court decision, intended to roll back even the marginal identity-acknowledging gains this country has made in the past century, I’m reminded yet again of America’s bitter ironies.

Stripping away a racial consideration policy, under the guise of furthering equity, is moot in a country that holds racial consideration as one of its founding cornerstones. Race is always considered here. And just as race was used to dehumanize and exclude generations of non-white students from admission to white-founded and led institutions, it can also be used — as it was in the case of my college — to save those institutions from closure, when white folks desert them for “better,” more “elite” or “competitive” options.

So is it better to seek admission to an institution that is loath to consider your race as a (diversity) benefit of enrollment or one that welcomes you because of it (and/or because of the financial benefits your admission may represent)?

Both choices will leave you feel a bit manipulated. Neither shore up complete confidence that your enrollment was earned through “merit” or “achievement” or “academic superiority” to other applicants or whatever other gauge makes a person feel like their acceptance is legitimized.

Very little in life offers that sort of confidence. This is not an equitable nation, nor has it ever been voluntarily interested in equity. Equity, to the degree that the U.S. has ever pursued it, has been forced into consideration through public shame, promise of potential economic gain and the desperate alliances forged from “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” engineering.

Black and Brown people living here have always done well to keep this in mind when making decisions about where and how to show up. It’s never been fair for us to have to do this. It’s never been fair to approach the college acceptance process, knowing that our application will be weighted differently and that, should we decide to attend a predominantly White institution, at least one person (whether instructor or student) in each of your classes will wonder what you’re doing there there. With them. On “equal” footing. It’s never been fair that, despite being more welcoming to applicants of all races and of most academic standings, predominantly Black and Brown schools often have less funding to offer low-income students, less capital to offer professors and instructors competitive salaries and less funding for renovation, expansion and upkeep.

Fairness aside — and know that, as a person of color, fairness is quite often an aside — decisions about where to attend college should not be made based on degree of admissions difficulty. They should be made based on one’s individual, holistic needs — and those extend beyond academic rigor. The most affirming action we can take for ourselves is to remember that the best institutions to enter are the ones that welcome us with the least equivocation. The best ones to remain are the ones that continue to appreciate our investment, beyond what our presence means for them on paper.