At Harvard Trial, Statistics Give Way to Personal Stories About Diversity

In federal court here on Monday, Catherine Ho described mochi, a sweet Japanese rice cake.

Ho, co-president of the Harvard Asian American Women’s Association, explained how the organization recently invited fellow students to make the popular confection at a cultural event it sponsored. “Education,” said Ho, a sophomore, “is not just what you learn in the classroom.”

For the last two weeks, testimony from admissions officials and statistical experts has dominated a high-profile lawsuit that pits Harvard University against Students for Fair Admissions, a group alleging that the institution discriminates against Asian-American applicants. As the trial entered its third week, the court finally heard from a handful of Harvard students and recent graduates, all of whom were minorities.

One by one, eight witnesses described their personal experiences at a university that they cast as a work in progress, a place where minority students feel welcome in some ways but excluded in others. They described moments of both connection and alienation on the campus. And they explained why they believe an applicant’s race should matter in admissions, just as it matters in the stories of their own lives.

Ho, who grew up in Kentucky, said her parents had fled Vietnam as refugees. She later described her family’s experience in her application essay to Harvard. When she viewed her admissions file after enrolling at the university, she said, “I was a little creeped out.”

Yet when Ho saw admissions officers’ complimentary notes about her essay, she called her parents to tell them. It was a sign, she said on Monday, “that our story mattered.”

Since enrolling at Harvard, Ho has helped organize gatherings that bring together students representing different minority groups. Last fall the Harvard Asian American Women’s Association co-sponsored an event called “Anti-Black Racism in the Asian-American Community,” where a diverse group of students engaged in frank discussions.

Such exchanges, Ho said, have been a crucial part of her educational experience at Harvard. So, too, have opportunities to engage, one on one, with other minority students. Like the black roommate with whom she discussed a racial incident on the campus. Or the Latino student with whom she’s discussed how first-generation students often feel great pressure to succeed. “By recognizing these experiences, we can be stronger together,” she said.

Like most witnesses who testified on Monday, Ho conveyed some ambivalence about Harvard. In court documents filed this past summer, she expressed concerns about allegations that Harvard’s admissions office is biased against Asian-American applicants. Still, as she told the court on Monday, she supports race-conscious admissions programs.

A lawyer asked Ho to reflect on what would happen if Harvard weren’t able to consider applicants’ race, and if, as a result, the number of minority students on the campus declined. Would that affect her experience?

“Without a doubt,” Ho said. For the worse.

‘I Could Finally Breathe’

To some observers, the testimony of students and alumni might have seemed like a mere interlude, even a distraction. It was a quiet day in a trial that has seen several heated exchanges. The plaintiff’s lawyers asked few questions, declining to cross-examine most witnesses.

Yet the vivid, at times heart-wrenching testimony delivered context that could help shape the case’s outcome. At the outset of the trial, a lawyer for Students for Fair Admissions said that “diversity is not on trial here.” Yet lawyers representing Harvard and several student and alumni organizations have proceeded as if diversity, its benefits, and race-conscious admissions programs everywhere are, in fact, on trial.

In question after question on Monday, those lawyers asked the Harvard students and alumni to explain how the university’s diversity had appealed to them as applicants and had benefited them, in classrooms, dining halls, and dorm rooms. If nothing else, the witnesses’ nuanced answers illuminated the complexity of minority students’ experiences on elite campuses.

Harvard on Trial

Detailed background on the lawsuit over the university’s race-conscious admissions policy, the case’s implications for selective colleges, and coverage of the trial as it unfolded, in a federal court in Boston.

• Harvard Doesn’t Discriminate Against Asian American Applicants, U.S. Appeals Court Rules
• 3 Takeaways From the Appeal of the Harvard Admissions Lawsuit
• A Judge Advised Harvard to Give Its Admissions Officers Training to Stop Bias. Will That Help?

Itzel Libertad Vasquez-Rodriguez, a 2017 graduate who described herself as an indigenous Mexican-American, recalled learning about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from other students. Being around people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, she said, had made her more curious as well as “a more critical thinker and a more independent thinker.”

Yet Vasquez-Rodriguez also described the uncomfortable feeling of seeing many white faces on campus, of walking into campus buildings named for white men. “Over time, that really started to wear on me,” she said. In classes where most students were white, she testified, she often felt nervous and unwilling to speak up. If the number of black and Hispanic students were to fall, she said, “it would be catastrophic to a person like me.”

Despite some negative experiences, Vasquez-Rodriguez found comfort in campus organizations for minority students. “In these groups, I could finally breathe,” she said, “and I could be myself.”

Sarah Cole, who graduated from Harvard in 2016, also described minority-student organizations as a force that kept some underrepresented students going. A former president of the Black Student Association, Cole said that such groups supported students in ways that the university did not, giving them “a strong community they could lean on.”

If the number of underrepresented minority students declined, Cole said, “there would be fewer students to do that work.”

‘My Story Was Heard’

Thang Q. Diep, a senior at Harvard, told the court that Harvard needs greater intraracial diversity. Diep, an immigrant from Vietnam, described his feelings about the relatively low representation of some Asian-American subgroups on the campus.

“It’s sucky,” he said.

When a lawyer politely asked him to choose a different word, the courtroom erupted in laughter.

The judge laughed.

And Diep laughed, too.

“I’ve felt marginalized,” he said, turning serious.

Still, Diep, an aspiring pediatrician, said learning how to collaborate with nonwhite students at Harvard had deepened his understanding of cultural identity and shaped his thinking about the kind of doctor he hopes to become.

“How can you look at young people in a way that’s very holistic, and take into account the full experiences of their background?” he said. “To see people as people and not just a single identity?”

Perhaps no one’s story was as powerful as Sally Chen’s. A senior at Harvard, Chen described how a university employee, apparently mistaking her for a tourist, once told her she had to leave a campus building. In that moment, she said, she felt “perpetually foreign.”

Yet Chen described her acceptance to Harvard as a triumph. Years ago, she said, her high-school counselor advised her that application essays about the experiences of Asian-Americans were “overdone.”

Yet she ignored that advice, writing about what it was like to be the daughter of Chinese immigrants, an experience she related to Invisible Man, the novel by Ralph Ellison. “It was really fundamental to who I am,” she said. “I don’t think I could’ve left it out.”

If Harvard’s admissions office hadn’t been able to consider her race, Chen told the court, she didn’t think she would have ended up in Cambridge, Mass. “There’s no way in which flat numbers and résumé could’ve gotten across how much of a whole person that I am,” she said. “My story was heard.”

In Grutter v. Bollinger, in 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld colleges’ consideration of applicants’ race, among many factors, to further a compelling interest in “the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.” A key piece of evidence in that case: the University of Michigan Law School’s detailed description of specific applicants who had benefited from its consideration of race, ethnicity, and other contextual information beyond grades and test scores. In a case laden with data, those personal stories stood out.

Whether the stories shared on Monday might carry any weight with the judge remains to be seen. But for the throngs of minority students packing the back of the courtroom, many wearing light-blue “Defend Diversity” T-shirts, those stories, at least for one day, mattered a lot.

Eric Hoover writes about admissions trends, enrollment-management challenges, and the meaning of Animal House, among other issues. He’s on Twitter @erichoov, and his email address is eric.hoover@chronicle.com.