Daily Lumina News 071223

Many leaders at Historically Black Colleges and Universities are quietly having conversations about how to proceed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action.
Some campus officials expect a deluge of applications from Black prospective students dismayed by the decision or anticipating being rejected by selective predominantly white institutions in higher numbers. Others believe the projected wave of new students is being overstated and have adopted a wait-and-see approach.

As colleges adjust to the new legal reality surrounding race in college admissions, there are two things that higher-ed leaders can do to increase diversity, contends Josh Wyner of the College Excellence Program at the Aspen Institute in this op-ed.
First, they must increase need-based financial aid so that more racially diverse students are admitted and can afford to enroll. Second, Wyner says they need to recruit and admit more highly qualified students transferring from community colleges.

“I think it's really important to make clear that numbers don't define students. Affirmative action does not prioritize people who don't deserve to be on college campuses. It actually improves access for people.”
In this interview, student leaders of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Affirmative Action Coalition share their thoughts about the role affirmative action plays in ensuring that underrepresented students have opportunities to pursue higher education.

Currently, just 5.7 percent of all doctors in the United States are Black, and nearly 7 percent are Hispanic, while 64 percent are white. Meanwhile, Black and Latino applicants still make up a small percentage of those who go to medical school.
Now, doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators are raising concerns that this gap will only widen in a post-affirmative action world.

On June 30, in the wake of losing a Supreme Court lawsuit over his $400 billion plan to cancel student loan debt, President Joe Biden announced plans to use his “compromise and settlement” powers under the Higher Education Act of 1965. But what exactly does that mean?
Luke Herrine, an assistant professor of law at the University of Alabama and the former legal director of an advocacy group working to cancel student loan debt, breaks down the Biden administration's new effort for student debt relief.

In 2023, a record-breaking number of anti-LGBTQ laws targeting queer people have been proposed, advanced, and adopted, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
This new landscape is weighing heavily on many college-bound LGBTQ students. Alongside the typical worries of leaving home are starker, more pressing anxieties. Is this school in a state that attacks my queer identity? Can I be "out" there? And underneath every other question, the central one: Will I be safe?