The numbers tell the story, even if the email doesn’t.
Last week, Provost Francis Doyle sent an email to the University titled, “Brown’s newest students, by the numbers.” In the email, he discloses the demographics of the Class of 2028, the first class to be admitted since the Supreme Court outlawed race-based affirmative action. The numbers are indefensible. The first-year Black student population decreased by 40% compared to last year. The Hispanic/Latine population dropped 29%. Brown University, a school that defines itself on pioneering inclusivity and an Open Curriculum to foster diverse thought, has a freshman class that includes a mere 18% of underrepresented students.
Many students reacted in uproar — a collective callback to Brown’s institutional history. Brown’s diversity is not rooted in willing inclusion but in response to student protest, predating even the merging of Brown and Pembroke College. In 1968, 65 Black students from both Brown and Pembroke College walked out to protest racist admissions practices. Seven years later, students occupied University Hall to increase financial aid for students of color and establish the Brown Center for Students of Color. In 1992, 253 students once again occupied University Hall, this time for need-blind admissions and to increase awareness for lack of class diversity.
Three decades later, we respond with the same outrage: Brown does not do enough for student diversity. Predicting student ire, Brown’s statement led with its softest words and spokesperson smile, expressing that the University laments the effects of eliminating affirmative action and is expanding race-neutral admissions strategies to maintain their sliver of diversity. The thesis of the Provost’s argument reads, “We believe our commitment to implementing lawful measures to ensure a diverse, talented applicant pool and enrolled class was essential in avoiding a more precipitous decrease in racial and socioeconomic diversity.”
I assert the contrary. Even after the SCOTUS ruling against affirmative action, Brown is contributing to this diversity drop through intentional admissions practices, including legacy admissions and the reinstatement of standardized testing. To truly mitigate the consequences of the Supreme Court decision, the University must eliminate admissions practices that advantage the resourced few.
Brown’s practice of legacy admissions is directly antithetical to the racial and socioeconomic diversity the University claims to be fostering. With legacy preference, applicants with familial connections to the University compound the monetary and cultural privilege of having an Ivy League parent with admissions preference, resulting in a direct correlation to wealth and race. According to a 2023 analysis co-authored by Brown professor John Friedman, “legacy students from families in the top 1% (of income) are 5 times as likely to be admitted as the average applicant with similar test scores, demographic characteristics and admissions office ratings.” Legacy students outside of the 90th income percentile still receive a significant advantage, being three times more likely to be accepted than peers with similar qualifications. Even President Paxson, a fourth-generation legacy student herself, admitted that if Brown University “were concerned primarily with socioeconomic diversity, it would make sense to eliminate” legacy admissions. Meanwhile, class privilege feels like a qualification to join the Brown student body, where the median household income is above $200,000 and 60% come from the top income decile.
A report presented to the Supreme Court found that legacy students at Harvard University are also disproportionately white, a direct result of the centuries of exclusion non-white applicants have faced within Brown’s admissions process. Surveys conducted by Students for Educational Equity in 2023 corroborated these findings, also identifying legacy students at Brown’s campus as disproportionately white. Although legacy students make up only 8% of the student body, that number feels more significant when placed alongside the demographic numbers released last week — equal to about half of the number of underrepresented (Black/Hispanic/Latine) students. The University’s legacy preference is representative of Brown’s approach to admissions policy: praising student diversity in community-wide emails, but neglecting to take substantive steps towards increasing it.
In the same breath, Brown re-mandated standardized testing in a supposed effort to maintain class diversity. In practice, it may be producing the opposite effect. Although test scores are correlated with first-year undergraduate GPA, they are also strongly correlated with parental involvement and socioeconomic status due to the inaccessibility of equitable test-preparation materials, with children of the wealthiest 1% being 13 times likelier to score above a 1300 on the SAT than low-income students. At the University of Chicago, a movement to test-optional permanence resulted in record increases in Black students, Hispanic and Latino students, rural students and first-generation students within a year. Yet Brown continues to reinstitutionalize a policy that discounts students of color and low-income students in the admissions process.
The solution to Brown’s diversity problem is not doubling down on inequitable and outdated policies. Of course, Brown’s irreverence would not single-handedly reverse the damage caused by the SCOTUS ruling ending affirmative action. But as the saying goes, the first step to making a change is acknowledging that you’re part of the problem. Brown is certainly complicit.
The University understands these correlations. In fact, one of their initial reactions to the SCOTUS ruling was establishing an ad hoc committee of Corporation members and Brown senior faculty “to ensure that the University is fully realizing its educational mission and upholding its commitments to academic excellence, equity, access and diversity”. Paxson charged this team to reevaluate three undergraduate admissions policies: legacy admissions, early decision and test-optional permanence.
Change should have been imminent, in a perfect storm of historical relevance and student activism. Yet nothing happened. Standardized testing was once again mandated for incoming undergraduates. Legacy admissions is still maintained; the University called upon community input, but have not yet provided a forum to do so.
Here’s the harsh reality. affirmative action is gone, and the only way to reverse the staggering drop in underrepresented students is for Brown University to acknowledge its own inequity. At this juncture, Brown has the responsibility to put action behind their words. They can fulfill their mission of equitable admissions or demonstrate that the school’s commitment to student diversity is just performative at best. Therefore, I conclude with this call to action. Brown, live up to your commitment by going beyond the email. Leave your tests and leave your legacy.
Nick Lee ‘26 is co-president of Brown’s Students for Educational Equity and can be reached at nicholas_m_lee@brown.edu. Please send responses to this op-ed to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
