 Hi, good morning. Welcome to New America. My name is Kevin Cary. I'm the Vice President for Education Policy here. And I want to say both to all of you in our offices in downtown Washington, D.C. and everyone who's watching online, we really appreciate you joining us for this discussion this morning. You know, we often plan events here ahead of time with a sense of optimism and positivity about the kinds of change that we are trying to see in the world. This event's a little different. We plan for it, hoping that we wouldn't have to have it, but we plan for it nonetheless. And so we find ourselves now in really the remarkable situation to be here in the year 2023 and find that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which was created to begin the emancipation of black Americans, has now been weaponized against them, then, and other people of color, by the United States Supreme Court. A court whose membership is only as it is because when the United States Senate was given a nomination by America's first black president, it chose to nullify that nomination for the first time in America's history. That's a hard set of circumstances to come together around, but it makes it all the more important that we're here today having this conversation. We have, I'm only going to speak to you for a few minutes before turning it over to the people you've all come to listen to. We have both a group of esteemed scholars who have worked long in their careers to understand and improve issues related to race and diversity in higher education. And we have a group of students from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, one of the two plaintiffs or the two, sorry, one of the two defendants in the Supreme Court case that happened last month, who have very generously taken some time to travel here to Washington D.C. to talk about their experiences as students, and both what they have come to experience and what their expectations are in the future. In our broader message that we hope to begin in this conversation today to all of America's policymakers here in Washington D.C., to all of the administrators and students and people in higher education is that despite the decision that the Supreme Court handed down, there are still many, many things that can be done to improve the quality of education that students receive to improve diversity, equity and inclusion in our institutions of higher education. And this is going to be a moment for a lot of administrators and leaders in colleges where they're going to have to decide to some extent whether they really are going to back up some of the words that they've been using about their commitments to these issues. It's harder now, but that doesn't mean there's no difference between the things they can do and the things they cannot. There are a lot of important choices to make. Those choices will affect the quality of education that students receive in American higher education. They will affect the opportunities that people have to go on to higher learning to meet with one another to be educated and to contribute in all the ways that college graduates and scholars contribute to American society. So we really see this as the beginning of a conversation and an effort here at New America to catalyze these conversations to bring people together. And it begins here with all of you. So again, thank you so much for coming. We have a great program and I am now going to turn it over for introductions to Rachel Fishman, the director of our higher education program here at New America. Rachel. Thanks Kevin for that introduction and those remarks. It really is a call to action and I'm so looking forward to the people that we've convened here today to discuss further. So for those who don't know me, I'm Rachel Fishman. I'm currently the acting director for the higher education program at New America and I have the distinct honor of getting to introduce the first of two panels today. Our second panels features students from the University of North Carolina like Kevin said from the affirmative action coalition and we're going to learn more about them in a moment. But first I'd like to introduce you to the scholars and and advocates who are going to join me on stage. So our moderator today is Deshaun Carr. Deshaun is a policy analyst with the higher education team at New America. Her work focuses on student basic needs issues that promote student success and outcomes. She has been leading New America's listening to her on affirmative action for people who don't know the people who will be on this panel today. They're already interviewed by Deshaun and the lead up to this event and you can catch all that content on our blog and some of them have authored some pieces that will be going up on our blog as well. Next, we have Maya Lubin. Maya is a higher education equity senior coordinator at the lawyer's committee for civil rights under law at the committee Maya leads the reason project. It's an initiative that brings civil rights activists organizations and students together to develop comprehensive strategies for increasing racial equity and advancing access to equal educational opportunity at flagship universities. Next, we have Dr. David Mikey Pobliot. He's a postdoctoral fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American research at Harvard and the civil rights project at the University of California Los Angeles. His research focuses on issues of race and higher education primarily on the disparate impact of states that have already banned race conscious admissions practices. David Hawkins is the chief education and policy officer for the National Association for college admissions and counseling. And for those of you who live in DC, we love a good acronym. So his acronym is NACAC, a nonprofit membership organization that represents more than 25,000 high school counselors and college admissions officers. For over 20 years now David has worked in enrollment management and admissions to alleviate systemic barriers to accessing higher education. And last but not least is Ed Smith. He's a policy senior policy advisor with Ed council. Prior to Ed council he consulted at the New Jersey office of the secretary of higher education, and he's worked at the Kresge Foundation. Ed's work has been focused on increasing college affordability, modernizing student loan debt repayment and recovering funds lost by students from who attended for profit colleges. So welcome to this esteemed panel. Thank you all for being here today. And I'm going to turn it over to Deshaun to get us started. Thank you so much for the introductions again, Rachel. And also thank you for the opening remarks, Kevin. And thank you to you all for taking the time out of your busy schedules to join me on this stage and talk about the timely things that just happened a few weeks ago. Before we get into the nitty gritty of our questions, I do want to do a temperature check. Now that we are a couple of weeks removed from the decision, I would love to hear from you all. What's one word that summarizes your thoughts about the court decision on race conscious admissions? Anyone would like to go first? I'm happy to kick it off. So as Kevin really eloquently laid out in his introduction, I think there's a grief that needs to be acknowledged, a grief and feeling sort of dropped by the highest court in the land. The Lawyers Committee has the really distinct privilege and honor of representing students and alumni at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and at Harvard. My colleague, David, who's also on the Educational Opportunities Project team at the Lawyers Committee, argued the case in front of the Supreme Court and represented those students and alumni. So particularly when talking to those folks, there's a real grief to work through around the decision. So there's also hope, right? As we spoke about affirmative action was or race conscious admissions was our government's attempt to act affirmatively to right decades of systemic wrongs. However, there are more tools at our disposal to do that work. So there's a grief to be acknowledged, but there's also some hope as well. For me, it's motivated. I'm really motivated to continue to do the work that I do right now to do the scholarship that I do. It's going to take a lot of work, a lot of hard work, and it's going to be an uphill battle. The Supreme Court's makeup isn't going to change anytime soon. So we've got to be also creative in this moment as well. I would say probably the word that stands out to me is unjust. This is a court decision that seemed almost preordained. In some ways, if you look at the majority opinion, you see facts and assertions that almost seem like they heard a case that was argued back in 1978. Whereas the dissenting justices seem to have paid attention, for instance, to things like the lower court rulings, briefs that may have been filed by organizations like the ones that you see up here, and reflected very much a current state of play. So a deeply unjust decision from the court, I believe that they had their mind made up well ahead of time as we were fond of saying they didn't take this case to tread water. But as Dr. David says, we are highly motivated, and I think that's the takeaway. I appreciate that, and echo the comments made by my co-panelists wholeheartedly. I too am hopeful and motivated, but the word I sit with is hypocrisy. I think for a few reasons, Kevin mentioned the weaponization of the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause, which I think reeks of hypocrisy, and I said so eloquently earlier on. But also the military carve-out, the intellectual dishonesty throughout the majority opinion, the throughline of color-blindness in the face of America's legacy of racial oppression, the current racialized disparities in educational, economic health, social outcomes, the experiences that minoritize racial and ethnic people have with our social institutions. I think the ruling spits in the face of that, and for that reason I'm continuing to wrestle with the hypocrisy of it. Thank you all for sharing those words and hypocrisy, motivator, creative. I feel like those are all the words that we're going to have to be thinking about this decision and going forward. I kind of want to now get into the nitty-gritty of our questions now, and I'm coming to you, Ed. So even before SCOTUS decided on affirmative action, we start to see racial equity come under attack, with some lawmakers already banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs, initiatives, and particularly southern Republican states. And recently, some states have announced wanting to eliminate scholarships that consider race, even though the course decision didn't extend to scholarships and financial aid. How can federal policymakers ensure students of color can access scholarships and resources to pay for college? I appreciate that, and for sure, at Ed. Council, we are seeing a wave of what we're calling anti-equity, anti-DEI policies at the state level uprooting our nation's progress toward diversity, equity, inclusion, and high-red, which deeply saddens me, but also motivates me for work ahead. This legal ruling, we believe, will add some political fuel to that movement, which is even more unfortunate. I know we'll talk about long-term policy solutions and maybe approaches the feds can take, but in the immediate term, I would like to just bring up the notion of enforcement. And as much as I would love for the White House or the Department of Ed or OCR to delay enforcement of the court's rulings, which may be one policy measure we can consider. I think it would be worthwhile to consider the ways that Title IV funding could be used as a carrot, perhaps stick, to prevent states and college leaders from overreaching from making the legal decision propelled the ongoing political movement to uproot diversity, equity, and inclusion. What do I mean by that? Well, like you mentioned, in states of Missouri, Wisconsin, Kentucky, institutions in Illinois, and there are probably many more at this point. We've seen lawmakers, high-red leaders apply a ban on race consciousness to financial aid in other areas of high-red administration, particularly those that serve students. So, you know, for whatever guidance that comes out and whatever, you know, iterations of the fact sheets that I believe the White House has put forth that I am supportive of, I would love to see maybe measures to protect financial aid programs that might be race-conscious or grounded in the historical realities that we see with respect to wealth disparities, income disparities, and the differences in resources that students have as they approach and navigate the college choice process. I'll just say one last thing. In the spirit of being, you know, rooted in the human experience and dignified, I resist strategies that place even more burden on students, even more cognitive load, even more emotional load to tell their stories with plight and grounded in discrimination. I think when we do that, we suggest that they are only their plight, only the discrimination they face. I look forward to hearing from the students and emerging scholars on the subsequent panel. But when we use words like resiliency, grit, adversity out of context and, you know, make sure that, you know, it suggests that we should focus on those things, let's say, in the essay questions or in the applications process, then we are suggesting that they should be doing more work to achieve our nation's diversity and equity goals. I think it's a shared responsibility and I'd like to see the Feds and institutions share in that responsibility and not just transfer it over to students. Would anyone else like to follow up or comment on that question as well too? I would say really quickly, there's a colleague of mine, she's a PhD student at the University of Michigan right now. Her name's Aya Waller Bay and she's doing a lot of research on precisely that topic of personal essays and surveys. What the Supreme Court has done with their ruling is to still allow the personal essay to in some way take race into account. But what researchers are saying that it's precisely going to come down to just students writing about their trauma narratives and personal essays. We're doing a terrible thing in this country, the students of color by making them write about that trauma, their plight experience in a personal essay and saying, like, okay, if you want access to a highly selective institution, you have to tell everyone how hard you've had it in life, how hard you've had to suffer. People don't want to talk about those experiences a lot of times. That's a horrible thing that students are going to have to do now. It is, it's re-traumatizing when you're writing an essay, the student is re-traumatizing themselves just to hope that they're going to get into this university on this one essay. Well, I do think for students who are watching who may be applying, this case wasn't about if you are a minority student because of whatever presumed hardships you can get in over somebody else. That's not what this was about. This was about being able to be considered in the fullness of your identity, even if it is tied to your racial identity. And so we should not put that burden on students to discuss harmful traumatic experiences that have to do with race. However, if students would still like to discuss the beautiful pieces of their identity that have to do with their racial identity, they certainly can still do so. There was a piece about students can talk about their hardship or inspiration, right? There was a particular line where students can still discuss the fullness of their identity but not go through sort of the oppression Olympics. Thank you all for commenting on that. Kind of want to keep the conversation focused a little bit on the institution. So, David Hawkins, I know you've worked a lot with institutions to reform their mission process with a racial equity lens. And when I chatted with you on the New America's affirmative action listening tour series, you mentioned racial equity change cannot solely focus on a mission process but needs to happen within the entire institution. What does that look like? And how can we hold institutions accountable for that? Excellent question. And we issued a report last year, we being NACAC, in which we made the observation which many people have made that admissions as its practice at a lot of institutions in this country right now is very much like the admission processes that were created originally around the turn of the 20th century, so late 1800s, early 1900s. And while admission practices have evolved in some ways, in important ways during the last century or so, that basic admission process is still in place. Of course the high school experience is always going to be one of the most important things colleges are going to look at. But you start going down the line and you see standardized tests, you see interviews, you see essays, you see letters of recommendation. And those things harken back to a time when colleges were really trying to figure out who to keep out, not who to let in. And the fact that so many institutions have now sort of replicated that, created that system that really is amazingly static from year to year is something we really need to look at. We really need to, in this report that we issued, we said if we're serious about equity, we have to probably change the system. That we use for admission. We have to change the way we think about admission to post-secondary education. Because so many of the things we do now sort of tilt the scale towards inequity because they are based on a fundamentally inequitable system. So within, and there are a lot of recommendations which the report outlines that I won't drone on about today, but the bottom line to your point, Deshaun, about the institution. Admission offices, despite the fact that they seem to be all powerful at some points, are really not. They do certainly have agency, they are important actors, they can advocate and lead in many very important ways. But there is an administration that they report to, presidents, boards of trustees, state legislatures. There are faculty that have very strong and often uninformed opinions about college admission. There are alumni, there are all sorts of different areas of the institution that play into the conversation. And one of our goals in the future, and one of the things we're actually quite excited about, is to have the conversations around the institution about reforming admissions. Literally reforming. And that I think is going to require us to step out of our day-to-day work as institutions and talk strategically about how things need to change. Start getting offices to talk to each other. We've found that often the diversity offices on campus don't have a real strong relationship with the admissions office, which that has to change. So there are many different conversations that we'd like to ignite and start to talk about different ways to even think about admissions. Yeah, thank you for sharing. And yeah, that reforming process cannot necessarily just happen in admissions and it can't just happen overnight, too. Like racial equity is not an overnight process. It's definitely a day-to-day or what some people say is a marathon. It's something that continues to go. Speaking on racial equity, I want to talk a little bit more with you, Maya, about student voice and representation around affirmative action. I know your work has been focused on working with students directly on their campus, advocating with them, thinking about their basic needs. With the course decision, it seems like now more than ever, it's important for policymakers, whether it be institutional, state, federal, to bring students to the table when creating policies that embrace diversity, equity and inclusion. What are some successes you've seen in your work helping students to organize? And what recommendations do you have for policymakers who want to incorporate student voice or perhaps have blind spots when it comes to working with students in these spaces? Absolutely. So higher ed policy and governance can sort of seem like a black box, right? Nobody knows what goes in and exactly how we get its outputs. But at its healthiest, this idea of shared governance being at the system, at the center with students as part of that stakeholder group when it comes to shared governance, it creates more robust policymaking. So much like the conversation we just had, equity should be seen as sort of this continuous circle, right? It doesn't just matter how and where we recruit. It matters the experiences that students are having while they're on campus, if there's equitable access to an opportunity culture on campus, and this goes on and on and on, and it's sort of this circular motion. And our biggest experts there are students. They live in the gap between the policymaking that happens in the conference room or the Zoom room, right? And the outcome metrics that we look at afterward. And so they truly are experts in between. They color in the lines that maybe our regression model can't show us as well with as much nuance, right? We still need those regression models, but adding that student voice is important. And so adding these to policymakers who are unsure about it, including student voice, I would say first to think about how you are conceptually coming to this conversation. And rethink what you think students have to bring to bear to the conversation substantively. And from there, if you're unsure how to engage students in the process, reach out to some folks who do, right? There are a number of student-led and student-centered organizations that can support that work, like a national organization like a Young Invincibles or someone like that, or state-level organizations like an Ohio Student Association, for example. And then campus-level student organizations like the UNC Affirmative Action Coalition. And New America is being a really great example in that today, right? You don't have necessarily student chapters, but to have this important conversation, you wouldn't grab some student voice to be a part of it. So I think there are many ways that we should do that, but we have to remember that they are experts and have substantive perspective to bring to bear in policy conversations. Yeah, I just want to reiterate, they are the experts when it comes to all this work. And we as policy makers, in the lines of our work, we owe it to them to make sure that we are committed to doing the things that we need to do for them, all to say. Got one more time for one more question coming to you, Dr. David. Your research has examined the ramifications of states that have band-raised conscious emissions. I know, Manu, we chatted a lot about the disparate impact and all those things, but what can we learn from the states who have already banned? I know you've done work in California, and also you were a student at Michigan State when all this was going on, so you have the lived experience, and then you also done the research as well. Yeah. I think that the biggest piece that's missing right now from the national conversation about what to do in response to the current bans is taking the example of the current bans that we have and seeing how they impacted the entire system of post-secondary education. And one of the discoveries that I made in one of my forthcoming research articles is that you can take a look at for-profit colleges and universities and see that there was an increase in underrepresented minority student enrollment at those schools. So it's not only the fact that underrepresented minority students are kind of being displaced from the most selective ones, they're being kind of funneled all the way down into much lower quality institutions that oftentimes have lawsuits against them for weird and bogus recruitment practices. So I think one of the federal policy recommendations that I would say we need to make is to bolster down on the gainful employment rule, which is something that focuses on for-profit colleges and universities, and what the gainful employment rule does is it makes for-profit colleges and universities more accountable to their students, making sure that they're able to pay back all the money that they borrowed for college upon graduating. So that's a good outcome. That's a non-race-focused policy recommendation, which can be done now, and it will not only help students of color, which in my opinion what my research says is going to happen is that we're going to have a lot more students of color at these types of institutions, and this will be a good response if we can get ahead of it and know that the students are likely to end up at these types of schools. Do I have a follow-up to that question? It's not related to for-profits, but a little bit more around HBCUs and MSIs, because I know there's been also recent things to come out that a lot of them are preparing themselves to see an influx of applications. What are your thoughts on preparing and supporting these other institutions who are also going to be attracting more students at HBCUs and MSIs? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that as well too. I think this is also a place that exists where we can continue to support these types of institutions. Students are going to end up enrolling in these types of institutions at a greater clip now. We just have to make sure that we can get people in the government behind issues and give them funding, give them what they need to be successful, help them increase their enrollment numbers. These are still many times somewhat selective schools, so anything that can be done to help them expand their enrollment capacities would be really really helpful. Any other follow-up questions or follow-ups to that question? Just that we shouldn't wait until a Supreme Court-affirmed action ruling to support HBCUs and MSIs, because we think there's going to be an influx. Those are institutions who earned support on their own merit without these extra pieces. I just wanted to say that out loud that they deserve their just-do, no matter a Supreme Court ruling. Thank you for sharing. I do have time for one more question, and this is for anyone who wants to answer. We kind of touched a little bit on this already about when it comes to racial equity at the institution level, but kind of these court cases have brought up the issue of being uncomfortable when it comes to talking about race and racism. What is it going to take for institutions and policymakers to have these uncomfortable conversations about race and racism so that we can actually move the needle in achieving racial equity? And that is open to anyone of you that I know it's a lot, but it's open to anyone that would love to answer that. I don't know what it will take, but I think it would be helpful to resurface those statements from the summer of 2020 and take stock of what progress we've achieved, whether by institution or state, in implementing the ideas therein when we were considering this kind of reckoning of our racial history and the higher ed systems and colleges' complicity in the racial oppression of black and brown folks and indigenous folks in America. I think beyond that, there's a moral responsibility, and if the statements don't compel folks to talk about uncomfortable issues of race and racism, higher ed has, and there are authors here that have written about this, benefitted from racial oppression by way of stolen lands and plunder that built the land grant system or enslaved labor to build many colleges or propel the enterprise of higher education. We are a part of that. If we study it, if we're adjacent to the system in many ways, if we're an intermediary supporting students, we are a part of that. I would hope that beyond what the business community can do to put pressure on colleges to maintain diversity by way of articulating that they need a diverse workforce. It's a part of our democracy or the social fabric of America. We could go on and on pursuing other routes, but we do have a moral responsibility. I would argue, and I would say responsibility is key here, and a commitment must be made moving forward to maintain diversity and equity. I think the first step is on all of us watching and in the room to not let these anti-equal opportunity actors go further with this ruling than they earned. This ruling was about admissions. It did not outlaw DEI programs. It is not fueled for you to push an anti, you know, whatever CRT book ban in your state legislature. It did none of those things, and so I think it's important for all of us to speak really loudly about what the ruling did do and what the ruling did not do, and to give the universities a little bit of cushion per se to be able to push back on some of these onslaughts of attacks that they've received. So I think that's the first step, not letting other folks go too far with the ruling. I would just add, you know, that higher education institutions can play a very important role in helping to shape our national narrative. We are seeing right now an incredible sort of effort to bend, some people bend themselves into pretzels to try to justify a system that if you simply admitted the truth about it, if you simply confronted some of the hard truths about how our system is constructed, you wouldn't have to twist yourself in knots anymore to preserve what is, and the reality is that education of any type can help everyone. There is so much room in education for us to do good, and for institutions to model what diversity, equity, and inclusion can do, and the kinds of amazing outcomes it can produce is a very important part of the future. Well, I would like to open the floor for Q&A now, and for those who are online, you may also submit a question and we'll be happy to take those as well. I have one right there in the back. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Question for Maya, I think particularly your last point about not letting this go any further. Right, my background is financial aid. I'm already seeing colleges start to retract admissions that are based around racial and ethnic sort of groupings and characteristics, and I'm curious what your take is on that because to me with a background of financial aid doesn't seem like these two things, admissions and financial aid are not synonymous, but I'm wondering what you think of some of the colleges that have already started to lump financial aid in with falling under this decision. Yeah, this is tricky and I'll start by saying that there are a number of folks like the Lawyers Committee and the Legal Defense and Education Fund and list goes on who are preparing a number of reports to kind of spell out some of these issues and what is still lawful and what's not. I hesitate to sit here and say keep every single scholarship program you know I don't want to rush and push institutions into the murky waters of lawsuits however this is not free range to knock every program that that creates more equal opportunity right and so this is where it'd be easier if the the court just outlawed you know equity and inclusion higher ed or but we had a ruling in between and so it's going to take a more nuanced look is going to take us looking deeply and closely at what can be kept and what can't but here's also the thing the idea that admissions offices and DEI offices and small not funded committees and colleges should shoulder the entire weight of the institutional equity mandate is is bogus and and what work in the end right there there's going to be a need for comprehensive measures and so just going back to the conversation of making sure that equity is infused in each part of our institution and to not get rid of all of those scholarships just yet reach out to some folks some civil rights organizations legal organizations who can help you analyze your particular scholarships in your area and how to make sure those target communities that most need them so I guess that's that's about as clear as mud right but the answer is I want to protect you and not say keep everything keep everything but I do want to say reach out for help and support and to take a closer look and don't be too quick to let go of everything that that creates more equal opportunity. This question is from one of our online viewers crystal but she wanted to know since universities can't really consider race with the attempt to have a racially diverse student body how can universities still strive for diversity in place of race. This is really like the biggest question there is out there right now and what institutions are trying to navigate moving forward and we heard a little bit about the personal essay but would love to hear more what others are thinking. Maybe I'll take the first shot at this since our members are admission officers to two broad answers. Number one we have the existing tools that everybody sort of knows about the essays the recommendations the extra curriculars those kinds of things. There is still plenty of room in those in all of those areas for someone to say you know to relate a life experience to say I was the head of the Latino student organization at my school to what have you for a teacher or a counselor to come out and say this student was active in X Y or Z. That can be indicative or outright sort of plainly stating students race or ethnicity. So there's there's one set of tools that are already at our disposal that we can use. The key of course is that the court sets the court said nothing prohibits a college from looking at that so long as the consideration is not in the race itself but in the character the whatever personal trait is attractive to the college. So there's there's going to be some some analysis that that institutions clearly have to do there. We're also looking to the future though. And what we're looking at is that students do a lot in their K 12 educational experience that just kind of gets frittered away in the admissions process. We're looking at innovations like performance assessments and more robust narratives about what a student actually does in school that can give you more than just a letter grade. It can tell you whether a student was worked well in groups that they were innovative that they were highly artistic that they approach things different ways. And I think we're even looking at ways in which admissions officers can actually look at artifacts that that students have produced videos of presentations you know science projects things like that. We would like to see a future where admissions knows a lot more about what what a student has done in their school what context that school is in and where that student comes from. So we hope there are going to be many different ways that we can gather that kind of important contextual information. One more take one more question. But even with that question was interesting is the court didn't strike you know diversity on campus as as it not being a compelling interest. So anyway just something to also think about. No something to definitely think about. So I just wanted to say thank you for coming in today. This is super enjoyable so far. This question is for Ed. So you mentioned the word hypocrisy as your one word that would describe what's going on or your feelings right now. And obviously I think that's part of that's referring to this military loophole that was in the decision. And I was just kind of wondering a little if you could expand a little more on your thoughts behind the existence of this loophole and if you were surprised. I think in an interest of time I'll just share that I believe that a diverse equitable inclusive high red system is of national interest as well security and otherwise. As much as our defense interests might be and I think as someone who has I've been recruited by colleges to play sports but not as much as I've been recruited by the military to go out and fight on the front lines. I matriculated from high school during the Iraq war and there would be military officers to come to my part time job to call my father's home line at 9 10 10 p.m. We should be pursuing people who look like me and perhaps others on this panel as vigorously to participate in the full array of opportunities that are incredible higher education system provides. And when we suggest that that's not of national interest and security defense or otherwise I think that's a hypocritical. Oh yeah one more question. Let's take the last one. Oh it is on. Good afternoon. I wanted to ask you know a lot of policy spaces. What I gather in my experience is that we have trouble connecting with our meeting you know voters constituents where they're at with these conversations with the messaging. So you know all of us in this room might know what we're talking about but how do we make sure that those of us who are learning about this issue are relaying a message that is relatable and connected to voters or constituents that way when they're having their conversations with people. They they it's in a way that's relatable that makes sense. That's a good question. You know I'll just build really quickly off of what I said about higher ed. I think that the phrase that comes to mind is that equity matters and equity matters for everyone. And both both in the sense that we all benefit from having an equitable system but also that everybody out there may have ways in which they don't have equitable access to something. And I think that's what we need to do to do a better job of anyone else want to follow up to that question. Yeah I think I think sometimes the the the problem with with the voters and the general public is that they don't they're not really familiar with the the benefits of diversity arguments that existed out there and that were really brought into play and played a central role in the early 2000s Supreme Court cases. The Bollinger University of Michigan cases and during that time a lot of research was done saying that diversity is not only beneficial to blacks and Latinos but it's also a benefit to whites and Asians. And I think when more people come to understand that part of the discussion that part of the larger discussion about affirmative action and they start to recognize that oh yeah there there are benefits and I could benefit in this way too. Then I think people's mind about affirmative action really starts to change but without that understanding you know we see the polls the way that they are. Well that concludes this first panel I want to say thank you to you all for joining me in this intense dialogue and hopefully for the people who are watching and also people in the crowd take away that we still have a lot of work to do. Even if the court decided not to have not overturned it is still a lot of things that need to be fixed and a lot of inequities that show within our system. But I do want to now transition over to our next panel which will be with the UNC students. Thank you to the experts that were just that just joined me on the stage. I can't thank you all enough for having that discussion with me. I do want to transition to our next panel so the next one to transition over to you'll hear from students who are advocating in support of affirmative action and fighting to ensure incoming students of color feel welcome and safe on their campus. But first I want to introduce my colleague Olivia Shiki who will be moderating this discussion. Olivia is a program associate at New America on our higher education team. Her work has included exploring faculty diversity on college campuses and she also has collaborated with me on a few of the affirmative action listening tours series. She's also doing some work around varying degrees which is also an annual survey that actually surveys Americans about their educational opportunities. And now I want to enter formally introduce our student panelists Sarah Zong Christina Hong Adele Zong enjoy John from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hills Affirmative Action Coalition. The coalition has been actively advocating and informing UNC students across the campus about the importance of diversity and the role of front of action plays in ensuring that underrepresented students have opportunities to pursue higher education. I don't want to say too much because they will get into a conversation and have the opportunity to tell you more about themselves. Thank you to Sean for that introduction and thank you all so much for making your way out to DC and speaking with us today. It was an absolute joy getting to talk to you the first time on our listening tour and as we are navigating this grief and this recent these recent decisions. I think it is so important that we are amplifying your voices and the work you are doing as well. So to kind of get started. First I want to start this conversation just by learning more about all of you and your organization. So if each of you could share what year you're in what your major is and whoever wants to take this last part what was the turning point for your campus meeting and organization like UNC Affirmative Action Coalition. I guess I can start us off. Hi everyone my name is Adele. I am studying business and computer science at UNC and I am class of 2025. I can pick it up. My name is Joy and I'm also a class of 2025. My major is medical anthropology political science and I'm minoring MPP which is short for philosophy politics and economics at UNC. Hi everyone I'm Christina. I am the class of 2026 and I'm studying political science and information science. And I'll take the last part but first hi I'm Sarah. I'm also class of 2025 studying computer science and political science with a minor in data science. And I originally founded the Affirmative Action Coalition back in September 2022. So a month before the Supreme Court hearing and the reason behind it was I came to UNC from Pennsylvania so I was an out of state student and UNC is an in state school. About 80% of the student population there comes from North Carolina. So I came there and I had just never heard about the Affirmative Action case and I proceeded to not know about it up until the very beginning of my sophomore year. And when I first heard about it I was like why is no one talking about this. This is not only going to dramatically change the landscape of the student body here at Carolina but it's going to impact public universities across the country. So that's why the four of us convened within a month and worked to educate as many targets as we could about what the case was. And there were just so many students that we talked to that had never heard of Affirmative Action before. They had no idea that there was a Supreme Court case going on. They just didn't really understand the implication that this lack of diversity could have on our students. And that was very much a point for us to convene and just talk to students about their opinion. So yeah that's a little bit of background. Thank you so much for sharing. Does anybody have anything they want to add? Sounds good. Okay so thank you so much for that. And clearly as is evident the work y'all are doing is so important because like you said not everybody even knew this was happening. But now that the decision has been made a significant part of your work previously has focused on initiating these discussions among students about the importance of Affirmative Action. But now that it has been overturned what does activism look like moving forward for you all? So I can take this question. Like Sarah mentioned we initially started as like an organization to educate and inform students on campus. Lots of my friends when I mentioned this when it first came out was like they didn't know that that was a case. They didn't know that it started in 2014. They didn't know anything. They didn't hear about the student interveners. And so we wanted to emphasize on how important it was. And so that's what the initial like motivation was to start this organization. But now we like kind of shifted to like talk about everything related to diversity at UNC and it's not just Affirmative Action based. Because we just really want to emphasize the importance of diversity and how it can help us socially grow. And it benefits all students no matter if you're a student of color or not. And so that's like one of the biggest things that we've been focusing on. And a lot of like another thing that me and Christina recently found out or not recently but this was back in like the fall. We were going through like some of the archives at UNC. And one of the biggest things was like UNC's like progression to becoming more diverse has been always been student led. And so we want to continue working. And kind of what we've been doing is like trying to expand on our campus by unifying all of our like cultural clubs and like trying to like get other people to speak up. And I think it's evident that we have considering like our responses when the case first dropped. We've released a response within I believe the hour it fell and or the decision came out. And then a lot of like our fellow student orgs also like kind of based some of their responses on to ours. And I think we've just been trying to unify our campus and highlight the importance of diversity. Very cool. And that work is so important because all of these topics around diversity, equity and inclusion on college campuses, they're all so important. And you spoke about how a lot of the diversification on UNC's campus has been student led. But we also know that faculty can play a role in supporting students. And this will be especially important now that we are looking for new and innovative ways to support students of color. So something I'm particularly interested in in our affirmative action listening to our talk. One of you mentioned this role that faculty of color in particular play in ensuring that students of color have a safe space on campus. And so I was just wondering what connections do you see between the federal affirmative action ban and the importance of having a diverse faculty? Yeah, I can take this question. I think something that we keep repeating is that affirmative action isn't a silver bullet. It doesn't solve all issues. There are a lot of things that also play into creating a safe environment and a diverse environment campus. And one of those things are having diverse city and faculty. And I think what we're seeing across the country is a lot of bans on DEI, which are also having a UNC where they're banning GI statements. And our medical school actually was supposed to have a whole program dedicated to doing DEI work. And they repealed that because of our state legislator. And so students find so much mentorship in their faculty. So they take up a lot of... I think being an academic is work around the clock, but it's also when you are a faculty of color in campus, you do a lot of other work that is put on to you because you are a person of color. Specifically, I noticed a lot of women of color take on this responsibility. And at UNC, they have a really difficult time recruiting and retaining faculty of color because of the amount of work that is put onto them. And we've had a huge amount of faculty leave because they said that we're not being compensated. So much of their time is kind of doing damage control and not actually their academic work. And they're seen as tokenized as this is their work, just helping students, helping students get over, process their racial trauma and continue to process the trauma they face on campus. And they're only known as the professor of color on campus as opposed to their academic work. And so an example of this work was we had a professor, Dr. William Sturkey, who was on campus. And when we had the Sam Monument taken down, he was the one who out of his own time and he wasn't being compensated because UNC said that they wouldn't compensate him. He taught classes about what was happening, the history on UNC campus. And it was his second last class, I think, or the last class where they found out that UNC gave $2.5 million to a neo-conservative group. And that was a very big disappointment for him because he was doing so much work supporting students of color, specifically black students on campus and educating. And he wasn't compensated, but they did have the money to donate that to a neo-conservative group. And so we keep seeing teachers and professors leave campus and we had a professor speak out, Dr. Caldwell, and she said I was one of the one of eight black full-time professors, black women full-time professors on this campus. And you can imagine on a campus of 30,000 students, how much do you have to take on? So I think now we're repealing, not only from revaction, we're repealing among DEI. Then it's like these institutions, when you're the only person of color, it's a lot to take on and it's a lot of burden. Yes, we definitely have a lot of work to do in ensuring that not only that we have diverse faculty, so that students feel supported, but also that we are protecting these diverse faculty as well. And you bring up the DEI bands and that actually serves as a perfect segue into our next question. So for whoever wants to take it, across many conservative leading states, these bills are being introduced to band campus-based programming that embraces diversity and equity and inclusion. So what are your thoughts on these bills emerging out of state legislatures and what should Congress and the White House in particular know about DEI initiatives and their role in post-secondary success for students of color? Yeah, I kind of want to, I think we have kind of categorized this anti-DEI movement as the quote-unquote Florida effect because so much has originated in Florida, like for instance the Don't Say Gay Bill, which is probably the most prominent example, and UNC is a public state school, which means that our Board of Trustees is controlled by the state legislature. So obviously when we have a conservative state legislature, we have a conservative Board of Trustees more willing to crack down on DEI policies, so this has been really frustrating for us because there are movements on campus that say that conservative thought is being oppressed and they want to create pathways for more conservative speakers to come onto campus and that's just extremely dangerous to us as well as Christina was saying the lack of diverse faculty we already have, that's huge. And it's really, really frustrating to see. I'm currently interning on the Hill and I went to a briefing last week that was held by the One Million Teachers of Color campaign and they shared a statistic that in 96% of schools, the ratio of students of color is higher than the ratio of teachers of color. That is huge and I know I grew up not having any teachers of color in a predominantly white community and that really kind of shaped my path to activism, so I think it's really hard to ask federal policy makers to do a lot about this because so much of education is state controlled, but one of the biggest things we can do is pass legislation such as the Pay Our Teachers Act which will raise the minimum wage of teachers up to 60K. Financial barriers are such a huge blockage of achieving, having teachers of color and then also more publication of education data and the current committee on education in the workforce has been banning a lot of the usage of education data and when we don't have access to data we don't have access to statistics and student stories that help shape policies. So those are just two of the things that federal policy makers can do but I think a lot of this battle will be concentrated at the state legislature and students should be paying more attention to that as well. Thank you so much for sharing. Does anybody else have anything to add? Okay, so for our next question, we are seeing more student advocates like yourselves emerge in the wake of affirmative action being overturned and as more states try to ban the EI efforts. So what would you like to say to other students at other college campuses fighting for equal opportunity and for their identities to be embraced throughout higher education? Yeah, I think first and foremost, you are not alone. There's a community behind you. There are organizations like New America and the Lawyers Committee that are supporting you and supporting all of the work that you are doing and fighting and advocating for yourself and other people. That having been said, it is also not anyone's responsibility or any student's responsibility to represent your entire school when it comes to diversity and affirmative action. I think Sarah actually mentioned that this morning. I think it can be very exhausting and when we were having discussions with other students of color at our school, they all mentioned that it was very mentally exhausting having to feel like they're advocating for not only themselves but other students of color and then also even students beyond their own cultural identity because, again, diversity and affirmative action affects everyone. So I think it's also very easy to feel like you're alone and then it's also very easy to feel like you have imposter syndrome and that you don't belong, especially when there's other opinions actively trying to tell you that you don't deserve this spot on campus when you obviously earned it, you are there for a reason. So just reminding yourself as well that it is just imposter syndrome and that you really do have a spot and that you are there for a reason. And to quickly add on to that, yes, the case was UNC. Yes, the case was Harvard, but this is not a Harvard or UNC fight alone. This is like a nationwide fight and as many voices are as many people who want to get involved, we will continuously support them as they have probably continuously supported us. And so I think we had someone ask this similar question to us and one thing I just said was having a conversation and just sparking that initial light is so important on a campus that doesn't have any of it. And Sarah, being the one to do that at UNC, joined the four of us and we're trying to be as progressive as we can with this. Yes, the work y'all are doing is absolutely amazing. So kind of to tie into that or add on to that, that mental exhaust, it's not just with advocates, it's with students of color across campuses, across the nation. So many students of color are feeling discouraged and uncertain about their post-secondary future and now that affirmative action has been overturned. So kind of to add on what message do you have for those students who seek hope in this situation and what message do you have for policymakers as well? I can start us off. Okay, so first, we will not give up. And that's something that we want to make very clear to everyone who's listening and anyone who has time to listen to us. We are not going to give up and there's so many things that we can do and there's so many ways because just because they overturned affirmative action like Christina said, it's not a silver bullet. There's so many different things that we're going to try and do. There's so many ways that we want to uplift student voices and everything like that for everything in our power to like make the university to continue to be diverse even with everything that's going against us. And my co-chair, because I'm the outreach chair and my co-chair Julian, I think you spoke to him. He had a quote from him because I just I love him so much. But he said, numbers don't define students and affirmative action has never been about prioritizing people who don't deserve it. It has been about improving access for people who do. And that's truly like the most beautifully well-rounded, well-said thing that I've heard and that's what it is. It's not about the number like we're not breaking it down to 20% of this amount of students and other things like that. We want us to continue to strive forward and be as equitable with all of our opportunities. And just to add on to that. That was a really good quote when I listened to it. I was like that's so like embodies everything we're fighting for. I have the last month had the privilege of kind of sitting down and speaking with a lot of previous student protesters and listening to every search in their backgrounds and it's amazing to hear what previous generations have done. Some of these students have gone on hunger strikes for weeks and they've stormed buildings. They did all these things to push for ethnic studies and other war protests and I think just seeing the community that they have built and hearing from them how they continue to defy it and they continue to fight for what they know is right, for equity. And it reminds me of Derek Bell's interest convergence theory where it's like in order to get the majority to move the minority's interest has to converge with the minority's interest. And I want to say that just because we are the minority doesn't diminish the importance of our needs. We know that we belong and just because we are a smaller portion of campus doesn't mean our voices don't matter. And so I think that's something I struggle a lot in high school. It's like I'm one student. What does it mean for me to be saying something? But it does matter because every voice matters and every voice counts and as Joy said and Julian said, you're not just the number or statistic, you are a story. Very inspiring words and I love that quote from Julia and I think it's so important because there are so many misconceptions about what exactly is for move action, what exactly does it mean to be race conscious. So I have one more prepared question and I think we might actually be able to get into audience Q&A a little bit early but as we talk about how it's so important to amplify the amazing work y'all are doing and amplifying your voices because you are the experts. As a coalition, you have had the opportunity to work with various organizations that amplify students' voices on this issue. How important has it been to have your voice heard in these spaces? I can kick this off. So I know Maya was kind of talking about this in the last panel and I think it's frustrating when students aren't considered as stakeholders because we are the people that are being impacted by these policies and when organizations aren't talking to students, how do you really know what your policies are doing and if you don't understand the people that you're trying to help then you're not really going to craft good legislation or good research that genuinely impacts the lives of students and that's why it's so important to make sure you are uplifting students' stories and you are providing funding and committing to events like these where student voices can genuinely be heard because we are fighting a really tough fight and we actually had an interview this morning and I was talking about this but I think our generation faces just so many crises that have kind of been passed down to us like we're tackling the reproductive rights movement and we're tackling climate change and we're tackling all of these different social barriers and for our generation to be working this hard and not being listened to is extremely frustrating and that's why I think it's really great that we're able to be here and that we're having Gen Z members elected to Congress and having young people kind of at the forefront of this activism movement because we are being impacted by these education policies and we are being impacted by just so many different crises and it's kind of, I think it's really great that we are kind of helping to shape the policies that are affecting us and the people that are younger than us. Yeah, and just to add on really quickly I think I was talking to Deshaun when I first got here on Sunday afternoon but I think something was brought up about just like because when we were at school in the fall and it was just the four of us when we first started we were putting a good 30 hours into this every week like up to 50 hours sometimes we'd wake up in the middle of the night respond to an email go back to sleep get up the next morning at 7am to go to our 8am classes and it's a lot for student organizers but because of how important it is and because it's going to impact people who come after us we continue to strive forward because if we stop then it's a lot of work that just doesn't get done so yeah, I think with that we really want to emphasize on that and then I think Adela wanted to say something Oh, yeah, I was just going to kind of pivot it a little bit I absolutely agree with Sarah and Joy and Echo there are points but I was going to mention that like from a coalition side a lot of our objective is to educate others and especially other students especially since UNC as a student body wasn't really even aware of the case up until like the actual decision day that it was overturned so being able to work with organizations that are able to share our work with others and have other students across the nation learn about this as well and have like maybe even become inspired or like have their own ideas about affirmative action has been really amazing and really great for us as well and we are so grateful to be able to listen and learn from you because as has been said multiple times like y'all are the experts y'all are on the front lines and the work y'all are doing is absolutely incredible so we are so appreciative as an organization and as a policy space but I do think that is actually all I have so I will turn it over to Q&A from the audience anybody in here we again have the mic to pass around and we are also taking questions online so alright this comes, this is an anonymous question that we got from someone online that wants to know this case was cynically designed to pit the interest of some students of color against other students of color so how has this dynamic sort of affected your advocacy on campus and how you handled the case and moving forward well to start off UNC's case wasn't like Harvard's case where we used Asian American students against black and brown students and it was really funny because me and Sarah when we were talking we were like isn't it hilarious that the four of us started this not knowing what Harvard's case was like at all and so we all just got together and we were like this is crazy because as our team has expanded and we have had others join us it's also like the four of us like the majority of our coalition is Asian women and so I think we also come to realize that we don't speak for a good portion of people on campus and so that's why we were so hell bent on trying to unify as many cultural organizations on campus and trying to get them to speak because we don't have the experiences we have the experiences of Asian women and it's great that all four of us can share that because with our similar backgrounds we still have very different stories like all four of us went to go into different work when we like graduate and everything and so yeah we want to uplift voices by unifying and like creating this big movement or this big wave of like change and I also really want to talk about how like the Asian American community is not among a list we're all put together like Asia's like most of the world so to combine a whole group of people and be like this is your experience that's kind of crazy to me so I think that like I think we need to push back this past this narrative like Asian Americans are discriminated in the process of college admissions I know personally that we've all talked about how we've all shared our Asian identity in our college admission and it does impact, positively impacted why we're at UNC I can see for myself my test scores and my GPA doesn't match out of student like standard but I still but when I reviewed my college admission and why they admitted me they were like well the activism you did in Asian American community is we love that we hope you can bring something like that here and so my background played a huge role and bring back the idea like we aren't numbers like I'm not just like my SAT score I have other things to bring as well as a lot of other students and I hope that if Asian American students are sitting it's a call to action that we have to not continue this myth because it's hurting our community and it's disappointing to see how our group is used as a political wedge and some people are playing into it to put down other racial groups we have a question over here first I just want to say it's really cool that you guys are here today I've never been to an event where students were speaking so this is really cool I was just wondering so obviously the affirmative action case was and continues to be a super controversial issue hence why the court decided to announce it at the very end of their term so anyways I was wondering about starting the coalition what were maybe some challenges that you faced starting something that had this super controversial undertone to it I honestly don't even think we thought about that like I when I first heard about the affirmative action case my first thought was number one what can I do to get involved and then when I realized that there was no infrastructure on campus to fight for affirmative action how am I going to start this and I don't think we thought about the controversy until we started tabling and students would come to us and be like why are you doing this like oh my gosh but before that we I think we all kind of just jumped in head first because it was the right thing to do and that's really it I think we faced challenges of solidarity on campus and I think that's something that's really refreshing to me is that solidarity has kind of been at an all time low and I think that especially here as Asian women like Joy was saying I can't speak for the experiences that I haven't lived and to me that means I need to reach out to communities with different identities than the ones that I have and it was difficult to talk to students and encourage them to work together just because we kind of wanted to create something that encompassed the entire Carolina community and there were groups that wanted to focus on their own identities and honestly I learned that that's totally okay like we will try to diversify our own group and work to advocate on behalf of students that we know and the students that we are but at the same time we can't speak for everyone on campus and that's been a really tough lesson for me to learn but I think that's probably probably was our biggest challenge in the beginning we also didn't really get like hey comments in the beginning because we were just so small and like nobody cared and and then after the case results dropped everyone started like okay like Christina was talking about this but we got so many DMs that were like this is wrong this is awful and we were like we don't really want to respond to you and then we got tagged and they were calling us racist but like and then making like really racist comments towards us so it was really crazy I think it was just hectic afterwards like when we first started we were like oh this isn't bad like I thought we were going to get a bigger reaction but we didn't tell much much later so I think the consequences came like we're not consequence but just like the negative sides of like the media didn't come till way later and I think we're all so grateful for that because I've been really crazy to deal with could I pivot a little bit I think another thing that really like a kind of a deli about this up but it's like taking care of your mental health because this is a lot of work we're here to learn not to fight to learn like and it's so important that we know that it's institution's responsibility that they should have these things already here and it's not responsible students to constantly be like hey we need this we need this and I think especially with students of color and like talking about mental health and how my friend Divya Aikut she was doing this study and she found that it was about like how a lot of the women's health and specifically with like stress and how a lot of women of color particularly black women accelerate an age faster than the white count apart because they have to take on this stress of being community builders and taking on you know all this work of racial trauma and this gender identity so I think the best way they found to kind of get past that or try to kind of ameliorate the kind of consequences is through community and so I am so grateful to work with such lovely women and we do things that are also not just for action it's community building finding a sense of like belonging with amongst other students and there are some days we're gonna come out of meetings and you're gonna be like that was awful like I feel like I'm screaming into the abyss and no one's listening but like you have a place at campus and you there are gonna be days where you're gonna move forward and there's gonna be some days where you're just like I can't there's not gonna move forward and that's okay there's some days weeks where you're just like I'm not gonna do anything and that's okay because I feel like it's such a work mindset like you have to keep pushing but it's okay because a lot of institutions try to wait out their students they wait for the four years and they're like you're gone the demands are gone and so I hope that students don't feel like this is their only respect this is their tire is the institutions too I think we probably have time for one or two more questions go right there first and foremost thank you so much for coming out and talking with us I learned a lot from this panel given the number of months that you spent working on this project I'm interested in hearing about if there were any direct lines of communication between the coalition as well as the administration and faculty at your school and if so what was their response like I think we spent like a solid month trying to find an advisor so we talked to at least like eight different faculty members and then we talked to like the dean of the undergraduates arts and science I think that's what it's called and she kind of was just like she's she was like very supportive for us I like most of the professors were like I would love to help you but I don't know how to help you and so a lot of it was like working together to figure stuff out and me and Christina spoke to like a professor group on campus called slate and I don't know if they're technically tied to UNC but they're all UNC faculty and so yeah a lot of our faculty have been very supportive but I think Christina knows more about this than I do but a lot of them have been prevented from talking about affirmative action and having like responses to it but if you want to emphasize more on that oh yeah so I think the faculty on campus have been really helpful but recently I think UNC banned some compelled speech so it's very limited of what professors and certain institution institutional organizations can say and it's very difficult because no one really knows what to do because this is very murky water but I think trying to outreach has been very helpful and you know like doing things like educational summits and working with our advisor and trying to find what resources are available on campus has been helpful thanks again for speaking today I'm curious about sort of your plans moving forward you know it sounds like you started this last fall you've had sort of two semesters the case was pending now there's been a decision I think most of you are class of 25 or 26 so you have two or three more years on campus you know by the time you're graduating in May 2025 or 2026 what do you hope this group has accomplished come that date yeah that is a great question so I think something that is really important that we're trying to emphasize right now is to not let this movement of activism in this wave of activism across our student body die out like already it's kind of started to mellow which is really sad but once we get back on campus like we want to be as active as possible and you know continue to remind people that we're here and that we're here for them we're here for diversity we're here on campus so we are planning on hosting an educational summit and we are able to get in contact with a lot more cultural groups and a lot of other student organizations on our campuses so collaborating with them and continuing to get their ideas and their input on our events as well and continuing to just make sure that people don't become apathetic towards this situation and I know we've also talked about wanting to expand past UNC into broader areas such as the North Carolina Research Triangle which includes larger universities like Duke and NC State and then even going beyond that to working with schools nationally like Harvard which we've already have some connections with and other schools across the US. If you have one more then I think we can if not all pass it over to Deshaun maybe. This is actually the perfect closing question from somebody online but they have said you all have been working so hard and are continuing to do so this summer so what's bringing you all joy right now? Joy? I think my team I think just I'll start but I think mostly our team and we have three missing members currently but then back in two of them back in North Carolina and one of them abroad we were scattered this summer like two of us were abroad Sarah was here in DC some of us were in other states so being able to like come together every two-ish weeks to like meet and talk and still have the same energy as if we've been meeting in person we're just we're hopeful but we're also really realistic and like very hard on ourselves and that's what I feel like keeps motivating and pushing us and so I have to say like yeah definitely my team and the support that we all have for each other that's it? I'd probably say like I'd probably say being able to do this work and I have realized that I'm a very privileged person to be able to do activism and I grew up in a community and with a family that would let me go out and protest and for instance last summer after Robi Wade was overturned I went out and protest every single day for four weeks and that's just not like a luxury that most people have like most people have to work or have to go to school and to be able to commit to this work and genuinely often not get paid to be involved in activism is something that I'm very grateful for and I guess like I find a lot of joy in this work like it's definitely hard but like because I'm able to follow my passions that's something that I'm really lucky lucky to do That's a really great answer so I kind of don't want to follow up I was going to say community for me as well which is like part of the reason why we're all here fighting for affirmative action is trying to make sure that students have that kind of community on their campuses I feel like I would just repeat everything that was said so yeah Awesome, thank you all so much it was such a pleasure being able to speak with all of you I'll pass it over to the Sean Actually didn't prepare any closing remarks but I do want to I thought we're probably going to go over time but I want to say thank you to all those that did come out and those who tuned in online Thank you for submitting questions and having this dialogue with us I do want to thank the previous panelists that were on the panel with me thank you so much for sharing your expertise and words and I also want to say thank you to you all y'all are doing wonderful and amazing work and you've probably heard me say this before please take the time to self-care y'all are doing wonderful work but I do not want y'all to burn out but thank you again for everyone for joining in and continue to do this work and fight the fight because again we have a lot of things that need to be fixed