Reporting by Arik Karim, Yale Daily News '23
Muskaan Arshad, a Harvard Class of 2025 undergraduate student, serves as a student lead of the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard organization. When applying to the College, she wrote about her Asian-American identity in the essay section of the Harvard application, which she believed "played a significant role" in her acceptance.
"I believe I was accepted based on my Asian-American identity and the fact that I was given the opportunity to express what it meant to me."
Arshad's Stance
Arshad maintains that affirmative action is necessary for a fair and equitable admissions process. In her view, such policies take into account that "talent and intelligence reside within students of every ethnic and racial group, but opportunity is often only available to the most privileged." She fears that the absence of affirmative action policies will lead a regression in the admissions process, resembling a time prior to the desegregation of Harvard and a number of colleges.
Arshad & Student-Driven Activism
In June of 2023, the Supreme Court began to closely examine race-conscious consideration in college admissions through Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard. Led by conservative activist Ed Blum, the anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admission sued Harvard for the alleged violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Together, we fought for our right to exist in spaces that had historically excluded us and, most importantly, our right to education.
Arshad believes that the elimination of legacy admissions and other forms of preferential treatment is necessary to bring greater diversity to the college admissions outcomes. She cites a Harvard study quantifying that 43% of White students benefitted from recruited athlete, legacy, dean's list, and children of staff/faculty (ALDC) status as 75% of them would be rejected as White non-ALDCs. "I just hope moving forward they listen to student voices and follow through on promoting diversity and equity within their schools, first of all by getting rid of legacy admissions," says Arshad.
Arshad's Perspective on Meritocracy
When asked about the concept of meritocracy in admissions, Arshad remarked about the socioeconomic and race-based factors that negatively impact students' ability to access safe housing, healthcare, education, and social mobility. "Affirmative action is a step towards rectifying these disparities, as it attempts to provide a remedy for the unequal starting points that marginalized communities face," Arshad said. "Removing it would only hinder these communities' access to social mobility that their intelligence and talent rightfully deserve."
To truly establish a meritocracy, we must address the systemic issues that create these unequal starting points in the first place.
College Statements & Actions Post-SCOTUS Decision
A number of universities and colleges, such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, released statements reaffirming their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the admissions process. When speaking to actions of Harvard administration in particular, she said: "[w]ith the Harvard administration, they have been slow with implementing ethnic studies departments and responding to issues students of color have collectively had on campus. They don't act quickly, and normally, they don't act with the students' best interest in mind. It takes enormous public pressure to get them to make the right choices."
"The relationship between us student activists and the administration is not straightforward. It's hard to get the administrations to do the right thing," she said. "It was amazing that on the issue of affirmative action, they were very adamant about doing the right thing, and we were aligning with them. But I can't say that this happens often."
"The work the activists conducted, honestly, brought tears to my eyes. It's one thing to read about activism, but we collectively invested hundreds of hours to change the narrative."