Recently at Harvard University, a group of Asian Americans applied for admission at the university, and were denied for reasons other than academics. Though they had some of the highest academic scores, the admissions officers were not impressed with their personalities, which resulted in rejection from being admitted. This group then decided to sue Harvard University claiming it was pure discrimination.

In colleges that use race-blind admission, it has been proven that diversity has indeed gone up. However, when race is stated on an application, universities have exemplified their attempt to try to balance out races, thereby somewhat discriminating against other racial groups. At many Ivy league schools, Asian Americans are competing with their own racial group in many cases. This should be completely allowed, admission should only be accepted based on merit.

This issue could be solved if merit was the only factor in admission to a college. If race were to be completely eliminated, there would be no advantages or disadvantages in admission; This would mitigate any further issues with racism or prejudice in terms of college acceptance. Even though the use of quotas for admission have been previously banned by the Supreme Court, it is clear that it is still taken into account with many universities. However, the Supreme Court leaves a little room for error for the advantages of schools, by allowing race to be a factor as long as it is not the deciding factor.

The only fair solution to this issue would be implementing blind admissions throughout all universities in the United States. It makes no logical sense at all why Asian Americans are being discriminated against for having some of the highest GPA's in the country. The only way to protect students from this vast discrimination is by eliminating the element of race in all admissions. To have full equality in terms of acceptance into a university, there should not be any questions regarding race on the application. Applying to several colleges as a high school student, I was always bothered by the question of what race I was. Being both Caucasian and Japanese, I was extremely confused on which box(es) to check. Did I check the "White" box or the "Asian" box, or both? Why did it matter? The answer is that it should not matter.

Many Democrats agree that diversity and inclusion is an important aspect of education, and that they would all want a fair chance at admissions. With this being said, why should race even be looked at? Personally, it seems that a student should be admitted into college because of their grades and participation in extracurriculars, not because the school wants more of a certain race. With this type of thinking it discriminates against the rest of the racial groups that are applying. A student who has an excellent GPA may be denied due to the fact that they are Asian American (the Harvard case).

Harvard should be extremely nervous about how this case will end up, because it is absolutely clear that discrimination has taken place at Harvard for quite some time. Hopefully with the help of President Trump, we will be able to eliminate the Obama-era affirmative action policies, and gain true equality for college admissions.