In 1967, then-Superior General of the Society of Jesus Rev. Pedro Arrupe, S.J., urged Jesuit universities across America—many of which had only recently begun to admit Black students—to join Black activists and become more involved in the ongoing fight against racism.
Boston College took Arrupe’s message to heart.
When the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in 2023, it reshaped the landscape of college admissions across the U.S. For Boston College, this decision presented a new challenge in its ongoing efforts to increase Black student enrollment—efforts that had already faced setbacks despite decades of recruitment initiatives
As BC navigates this evolving landscape, its admissions and recruitment strategies play a key role in shaping the diversity of its student body.
Early Minority Recruitment Efforts
In February 1968, then-University President Rev. Michael P. Walsh, S.J., launched the Negro Talent Search (NTS), which included a $100,000 scholarship fund and recruitment initiative for Black students in the greater Boston area.
“Students here have not been sufficiently attuned to the Negroes of their own age group,” said Joseph McCarthy, co-coordinator of the NTS, in 1968. “To realize that there is a wide divergence among Negroes themselves—complexities and spectrums of thought and opinion exist in the Negro Community.”
In its first year, the NTS added 51 Black students to BC’s population. Each student received at least $1,000 in aid. At the time, Black students made up less than 1 percent of the student body. Over the summer of 1968, the program was renamed the Black Talent Program (BTP).
The BTP became student-run in 1971 after its faculty advisor, A. Robert Philips, resigned.
In 1972, BC set a goal to maintain a 10 percent minority population within its undergraduate student body. The same year, the University began searching for a dean of minority students to lead a program centered around minority student experience and admissions.
The University approved its first affirmative action plan in February 1973. Two years earlier, in September 1971, BC had appointed Alice Jeghelian as the inaugural director of affirmative action.
As BC rolled out its new plan, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare began to investigate the University for its low minority population and the efficacy of the affirmative action plan.
The 1973 plan included five components centered around increasing minority and women’s presence on campus and providing ways to report inequalities.
In 1974, Jerry Lee, then-current student coordinator of the BTP, accused the University of making a “deliberate move” to reduce the number of students admitted into the program.
According to Lee, the University had not increased the scholarship funds the BTP received despite a 5 percent rise in tuition, which limited the number of students the program could admit and the amount of financial aid they could provide.
Then-Executive Vice President Francis Campanella denied the charges by Lee and Michael Gee, student vice coordinator of BTP. He said the University “had an honest, straightforward commitment” to increasing the minority population and described the BTP as a one-of-a-kind program.
In 1976, however, the University transferred the responsibility for admitting minority students to the Office of Freshmen Admissions and Financial Aid, effectively ending the BTP’s influence on campus.
Recruitment Post-Affirmative Action
At the end of the BTP’s tenure, the Black student population had reached 361. Nearly five decades later, in 2023, 656 Black students accounted for roughly 7.53 percent of the 8,708 undergraduates who are U.S. citizens. The data does not account for the race or ethnicity of international students.
The same year, the SCOTUS ended the use of affirmative action.
In a statement to The Heights, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Grant Gosselin said beginning last year, the race of applicants, if provided, is hidden from reviewers.
“While the SCOTUS ruling prohibits the consideration of race in the decision-making process, the Court was clear to note that the decision should not suggest that schools are prohibited from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected their life,” Gosselin wrote.
For the classes of 2026 and 2027, one of BC’s supplemental essays asked applicants to reflect on the “reckoning on racial justice in America” and how it has impacted their lives. The University has since omitted this question.
Gosselin noted that while none of BC’s supplemental essays explicitly asks applicants to write about race, each of the prompts offers an opportunity to do so if they choose.
After welcoming its first class following the SCOTUS ruling, BC reported that 6 percent of their incoming class identified as Black, marking a 1 percent decline from the Class of 2027.
Gosselin noted, however, that this percentage does not include the students who identify as both Black and Hispanic due to a 2010 U.S. Census policy. According to Gosselin, a more accurate figure for all students who identify as Black is roughly 8 percent.
Amid the dip in Black student enrollment for the class of 2028, Gosselin said the admissions team remains optimistic. BC, he pointed out, did not experience the same steep declines as other universities across the country.
“While we are disappointed with this year’s decline in Black student enrollment, we are encouraged that we did not experience the significant declines seen at some of our peer institutions,” Gosselin wrote. “We credit the strong recruitment foundation we’ve built over the years in establishing pipelines that serve us well.”
As a part of their recruitment efforts, Gosselin said the admissions staff visit more than 800 high schools across the country, including charter schools.
“We commit to ensuring that each recruitment trip includes visits to a wide range of high schools—not only Jesuit, Catholic or independent high schools, but also a large number of public and charter schools,” Gosselin wrote. “In many urban areas, the latter schools are more likely to include larger percentages of AHANA students.”
In addition to high school visits, Gosselin said the Office of Undergraduate Admission collaborates with more than 100 community-based organizations (CBOs) that offer college counseling to students who do not have access to such resources at their high schools.
“In many instances, we are more likely to see qualified students who are interested in Boston College when visiting a CBO than when we visit the local public high school,” Gosselin wrote. “Public school counseling offices in many school districts are often so underfunded that their counselors don’t have time for college advising or even to encourage their students to attend a university visit at their high school.”
In the admissions office’s initial release of demographic data for the class of 2028, Gosselin credited partnerships with CBOs and QuestBridge for helping maintain diversity stability. He also shared that the admissions office prioritized increasing socioeconomic diversity for the Class of 2028 as well.
In 2020, BC partnered with QuestBridge, a non-profit organization that matches high-achieving, first-generation students from low-income families with universities. Each student matched through QuestBridge has their full financial need met, without loans, Gosselin said.
“This is an expensive partnership and one that speaks to Boston College’s strong commitment to ensuring greater access to this extraordinary university,” Gosselin said. “Boston College ranks among the nation’s top QB National College Match partners.”
According to Gosselin, more than 400 students currently enrolled at BC were admitted through QuestBridge.
Where Does Admissions Go From Here?
Raquel Muñiz, associate professor in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development and an expert in higher education law, explained that the history of race in college admissions has its roots in the original 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case.
“One of the major things that I like to highlight about [Brown v. Board of Education] is that at the core of it was a sense of racial equity,” Muñiz said.
Muñiz said the Brown ruling, along with the 1978 Regents of University of California vs. Bakke case, paved the way for the conversation on racial diversity in higher education.
“They were able to affirm that the use of race can be used to diversify the higher education community, and because of that, it’s sort of enshrined into law that diversity was a compelling interest,” Muñiz said. “And so it starts to create a doctrine, in some ways, that becomes durable over decades after.”
Despite the legalization of race-based admissions to diversify universities, Muñiz explained that over the decades, the use of race in admissions became more and more limited, ultimately leading to the landmark 2023 Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) case.
“By this point, it is significantly narrow, and it gives a perfect way for the Supreme Court to finally put the nail in the coffin,” Muñiz said.
In Muñiz’s view, the SFFA case pitted minority communities against each other through its argument that Black students were unfairly admitted at the cost of other communities.
“Most of it has been a focus on anti-Blackness,” Muñiz said. “They do mention other minority communities, but [Black students are] the target based on their language.”
The aftermath of the SFFA decision, Muñiz said, shed light on part of the motivation behind the lawsuit. According to Muñiz, SFFA accused higher education institutions of not being neutral after the percentage of Black students increased or remained stable, while the percentage of other racial groups declined.
“The assumption they would have is that the Black students could not get in but for their race being counted,” Muñiz said. “And so that, in itself, is a flawed assumption there, but also it tells you a lot about their motivation.”
Focusing on increasing socioeconomic diversity is a popular strategy to maintain diversity at higher institutions, Muñiz said. She explained, however, that the idea is not as effective in increasing racial diversity.
“That only captures those that might be on the lower socioeconomic status, but there’s a range of people who are Black or Latino or Asian—different communities that are on the spectrum in terms of economic status,” Muñiz said.
With regard to race-neutral approaches, Muñiz stated that using these practices simply maintains the status quo instead of working to change it. Muñiz noted that research showed that the most effective way to increase diversity in higher education was the intentional use of race in admissions.
“The disparities are showing up,” Muñiz said. “They’re just not named. In many ways, race-neutral is simply keeping the status quo, so I don’t know that there is a neutral way to think about it.”
While colleges can still review applications holistically, the SCOTUS decision explicitly removes race from consideration, Muñiz said, making it difficult to increase diversity.
“It creates that effect of limiting the racial diversity piece of it while allowing the other ones to continue to exist, which I think is a missed opportunity and limiting many ways for colleges to really improve their diversity,” Muñiz said.
Muñiz said she foresees that the number of Black and minority students will continue to decline at universities in the near future due to the politically polarizing climate the country is facing.
“The trend that we have seen—and that I would anticipate to continue—is a lot of self-censoring and people pulling back, like administrators, admissions officers, which is part of the larger ecosystem of admissions and administration and leaders kind of retreating,” Muñiz said.
According to Muñiz, religious institutions like BC could use their beliefs to guide admissions practices, creating a way to increase diversity while still looking at intersectionality.
“This brings in religious freedom, those kinds of constitutional protections that institutions like BC will have,” Muñiz said. “Like, ‘Yes, we agree with the court. We want a diverse student body, so we won’t use race explicitly, but we will continue to uphold our mission, our values, and we are considering these intersectional identities.’”
Although Muñiz noted the efforts of BC to increase diversity among the student population, she emphasized that not every college in the U.S. has the resources to do the same.
“Here at BC, there’s the different Messina College, they’ve started some other programming that they do with high school students besides Messina College,” Muñiz said. “There are those spaces where they are specifically hoping to increase the potential diverse student body.”
Despite nationwide trends of decreased enrollment and the possibility for admissions officers to overcorrect their enrollment targets, Muñiz remains optimistic that the pendulum will swing back.
Muñiz said she hopes universities will make the effort over the coming years to increase diversity on campuses.
“I think there’s maybe pockets of hope, which takes resources and time and dedicated people out there, but it is possible,” Muñiz said.
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