Dartmouth joins the massive resistance.

Race-norming keeps black representation about where it was. Hispanic representation increases. Asian-American representation declines slightly.

Sian Leah Beilock, Dartmouth’s president, is “proud.” She’s proud that Dartmouth, in the face of the Supreme Court’s decision that race-based admissions policies are unlawful, has found a work-around to maintain its existing quota-style levels of racial and ethnic diversity.

In a memo to alums, Beilock proclaimed: “I am proud to share that the racial diversity of our class did not decrease from the previous year.” She’s mostly right. Unless you’re an Asian-American, it did not decrease.

In fact, Hispanic representation increased from to 12.7 percent from 9.7 percent a year ago. Black representation was stable — 10.2 percent this year; 10.9 percent last year.

Consistent with what has happened at several other highly selective schools, Asian-American representation decreased — in this case from 23.3 percent to 21.8 percent. The percentage of entering students who did not identify their race doubled, from 3.3 to 6.6, so the actual percentages for some groups, particularly Asian-Americans, may be a little higher than stated above.

Beilock went on to say:

While people differ in opinion on the merits of the court’s decision, Dartmouth’s north star remains the same: to attract students from the broadest swath of society who are excelling in their environment, to help them learn how to think —not what to think —and to engage in meaningful dialogue across difference, so they can leave here prepared to lead our democracy. The data (here, here, here, here, and here) are clear that you get better outcomes when you bring different ideological perspectives, opinions, and lived experiences to the table. We are committed to this ideal as key to productive dialogue, discussion, and debate.

There’s a lot of mush to unpack here, but let’s give it a try.

First, the fact that Beilock is “proud” that the diversity of Dartmouth’s entering class did not decrease is telling. It shows that she wanted to keep the numbers of blacks and Hispanics where they were prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, and suggests that she and her staff put their thumb on the scale to keep those numbers there. More below on how I think they accomplished this.

Second, it doesn’t matter what people’s opinions are on the merits of the Supreme Court’s decision or what Dartmouth’s “north star” is. Dartmouth is required to comply with the law as set forth in the decision.

Third, the notion that Dartmouth isn’t “helping” its students learn “what to think” is laughable to anyone who has been paying attention to the college, especially those who have attended Dartmouth in recent years or with children who have. Dartmouth’s liberal arts faculty is almost uniformly left-wing, and its views filter into courses across the college’s liberal arts spectrum in the form of indoctrination.

For example, I know conservative students who wanted to major in English but didn’t because they couldn’t find enough courses to fulfill the requirements of the major that didn’t have a strong ideological tilt. They wanted to study literature on its own terms, not through a racial or LGBT lens.

Fourth, I checked the links Dartmouth’s president provided about how “you get better outcomes when you bring different ideological perspectives, opinions, and lived experience to the table.” This is standard-issue “business case for diversity” talk focused on team problem solving. It’s of questionable validity when applied to entities such as employers where teamwork is, or can be, important. It has very little to do with colleges, where students mostly learn as individuals rather than in teams, And it couldn’t possibly justify student-body diversity at the levels Dartmouth steadfastly maintains.

(I would also like to know what, if anything Dartmouth does, other than grant racial and ethnic preferences, to admit entering classes with differing “ideological perspectives” and “opinions.” I’m convinced that what Beilock really wants is differing racial experiences and at high quota levels.)

In any case, the “business case for diversity” argument and data were presented to the Supreme Court in various briefs, including amicus filings. The Court rejected diversity as a justification for granting racial preferences.

But here’s my question: How did Dartmouth go about maintaining its existing racial and ethnic diversity levels in the face of the Court’s decision? For me, the answer can be found (1) in a past statement by Beilock about use of SAT scores in the admissions process and (2) in “socioeconomic” data for the entering class.

What it boils down to, I believe, is that Dartmouth is using de facto race-norming to keep Hispanic and black representation where it was.

I discussed the likelihood of race-norming at Dartmouth in this post about the college’s reinstatement of the SAT as a requirement for admission. As I noted, Beilock made it clear that she intended to use SAT scores to judge applicants who come from a “difficult environment” (predominantly blacks and Hispanics) not in relation to all applicants, but in relation to other applicants who come from similar environments. She told the New York Times:

Dartmouth admissions considers applicants’ scores in relation to local norms of their high school (so, for example, a 1400 SAT score from an applicant whose high school has an SAT mean of 1000 gives us valuable information about that applicant’s ability to excel in their environment, at Dartmouth, and beyond). In a test-optional system, Dartmouth admissions often misses the opportunity to consider this information. 

In other words, Dartmouth is goosing up the SAT scores of students from high schools in poor areas (mainly blacks and Hispanics) to give them a leg up for the purpose of hitting its targets — of which the college is so proud — for minority group representation.

Dartmouth will claim that this device does nothing more than what the Supreme Court said is permissible — namely, to consider how race or ethnicity has impacted individual applicants But the norming of SAT scores is not the kind of individual-by-individual analysis of applicants’ history the Supreme Court appeared to contemplate.

Nor, if Dartmouth is sued for discrimination, is it likely to have evidence that students with considerably lower scores than the average entering freshman but whose scores significantly exceed the average score at their high school will excel at Dartmouth in any meaningful way. Grade inflation is pervasive at the college, but not pervasive enough to have abolished differences in academic performance. Thus, while the beneficiaries of Dartmouth’s race-norming are likely to have “good grades” as a group in the abstract, that alone won’t be enough to vindicate admitting them.

Beilock told the New York Times about her plan to sustain diversity levels in early 2024, after the college had completed the early admissions process and was making the rest of its decisions. Now, it seems clear that Dartmouth followed through on that plan.

The college states: “A record 19.4% of the class—nearly one in five—qualify for a Pell Grant, federal grants awarded to students from low-income backgrounds, up from 14% a year ago.” Coupled with its racial diversity stats, this shows that, consistent with what Beilock told the Times, Dartmouth, in a change of practice, is using low-income status as a surrogate for race and ethnicity so it can continue to be “proud” of favoring blacks and Hispanics, without much genuine regard for whether, compared to whites and Asian-Americans, they are equipped to handle Ivy League course work. (Note also Beilocks’s statement to alums about “attracting students from the broadest swath of society who are excelling in their environment.”)

Another institution has joined the Ivy League’s massive resistance to the law prohibiting race discrimination. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Dartmouth’s fellow colleges have used the same contrivance to resist.