Students and Administrators Reckon with a Less Racially Diverse First-Year Class

Read more about how the class of 2028’s racial and ethnic demographics are reported here.

Antwone Pollard ’28, a pre-med student from Newark, NJ, has come to Amherst at a time when Black students like him make up only 3% of their class. Last fall, that same statistic was 11%, according to federal reporting guidelines.

The class of 2028 was the first to be admitted following last summer’s Supreme Court ruling banning the use of race-based affirmative action in admissions. While the percentage of Asian and Latinx students in the freshman class slightly increased and decreased, respectively, the proportion of Black first-years has fallen by nearly three-quarters.

“I’m a bit nervous about moving forward because schools like Amherst and Tufts were doing something right by providing more access [to marginalized communities],” Pollard said. “The barrier to [higher education] is being built back up when, slowly but surely, it was becoming more accessible to people.”

Zane Khiry ’25*, treasurer of the Black Student Union (BSU), said he ended up at Amherst due to the college’s dedication to diversity.

“The communities of color here are just so strong, so big, so robust,” Khiry said. “A lot of [BSU members] are really afraid for the incoming first-years and the classes that come after them, just hoping that they won’t have to go through an experience that’s a lot more isolating than ours was.”

Khiry and Pollard are not the only ones disappointed by the class of 2028’s diminished racial diversity — other students and administrators shared similar sentiments. In the wake of these recently released statistics, Amherst has dedicated additional resources to recruiting and enrolling diverse classes within the bounds of the law.

“The college believes deeply in diversity and that education is best in a diverse environment, including a racially and ethnically diverse environment,” said Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Matthew McGann, who said he had feared a drop in Black enrollment in the wake of the decision. “To see those feared declines realized was a sad moment, and it's not in the best interests of what the college hopes to be.”

President Michael Elliott, who described the demographics as disappointing, said the college has ramped up investment in digital and in-person recruiting. Thanks to a $400,000 July grant, Amherst joined the STARS network, which is made up of colleges that focus on recruiting in rural areas. The admissions office also recently hired a Director of Strategic Access, a new position at the college, and is continuing to work with peer institutions on outreach.

The college was deeply involved in the Supreme Court case from the beginning: McGann initiated an amicus brief in August 2022 signed by over 30 liberal arts colleges, rallying to uphold holistic admissions processes that would take race into account. The day the decision was released, Elliott released a video expressing his “grave disappointment” in the outcome.

And when the case was brought to the Supreme Court, McGann went to D.C. to hear the in-person arguments (North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park ’05 argued in support of UNC’s race-conscious admissions policies).

“[Going to the Supreme Court] was an important moment, and in retrospect, it seems even more important,” McGann said.

The college made changes to its application questions following the Supreme Court ruling. Notably, a new prompt included a quote from the Amherst College Board of Trustees’ statement on diversity and community.

The Court’s decision left essays as the only place where it is explicitly legal for an applicant to discuss “how race affected his or her life through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise,” as stipulated by Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion.

No one involved in admissions decision-making was allowed to view individual or aggregate data on race until this summer, in a limited capacity and only after admissions were closed. The college also relied on its Office of General Counsel to ensure that everything was in line with the law.

Still, students like Myeongmin Choi ’28 were not entirely upset about the Supreme Court decision. Choi chose not to report his race out of fear that affirmative action policies would continue to apply.

“Ethnic representations in colleges are symptoms of greater, unequal systems in society. So the [class of 2028 demographics] are just a reflection of that,” said Choi, who is from Korea and attended high school in Montana. “When it comes to opportunistic self-interest, though, the case was good for me.”

Amherst’s percentage of Asian first-years remained relatively constant compared to last fall, according to self-reported statistics. Other selective institutions including University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Tufts, Princeton, Yale, and MIT experienced a variety of demographic changes. Yale, for instance, reported a 6% decrease in Asian first-years, while the percentage of Black first-years stayed essentially the same. And MIT's percentage of Asian first-years increased by 7%, both according to self-reported statistics.

“I had seen the demographic change at MIT first. I hadn’t really thought about it that much. I just assumed that MIT might have been a one-off case,” Khiry said. “Amherst has literally been written about the fact that it's so diverse. And so I didn’t think that kind of thing would happen here, and I was really shocked to see that it did.”

Elliott said the college plans to support all of its students, including Black students, as well as Black faculty and staff. Dean Angie Tissi-Gassoway wrote in an email that there are plans for fireside chats and that the Multicultural Resource Center is working to come up with some programming ideas about how to support students of color given the recently announced demographics.

“The fact is that the success rates of students of color at Amherst are in line with the success rates of the students in general at Amherst College, and that’s something that very few schools can say,” Elliott said. “Nothing about the Supreme Court decision has changed that.”

*Khiry has written opinion articles and features articles for The Student.