An Overabundance of Caution

The dust was still settling from the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action when, less than a week later, around 300 students of color at Western Illinois University got an unexpected email from the university: a $1,000 scholarship they’d been promised just months early would no longer be available. The Justice, Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (JIDE) scholarship had been exclusively open to students of color, according to an archived webpage describing the requirements. It had been eliminated, the university explained, because its race-specific qualifications could put the university in violation of the Supreme Court decision. Students’ frustration was short-lived. A few weeks later, WIU reversed the decision, reinstating the scholarship for the incoming cohort and flip-flopping on a decision that would have had profound effects on students’ financial access to the institution.