Columbia Law School has reportedly backtracked from a recently implemented policy requiring applicants to submit video statements as part of the admissions process, after facing scrutiny.
The law school added a new video requirement for all applicants to record a 90-second video statement to give the admissions committee greater “insight” into their personal strengths and achievements, an archived webpage from July 31 reveals. Critics accused the school of trying to circumvent the recent Supreme Court decision which struck down race-based college admissions practices.
However, the law school removed the language from its website after conservative news site The Free Beacon questioned the school about the policy.
A person protests outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Thursday, June 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Columbia Law School said the video requirement was put on the website by mistake.
“Video statements will not be required as part of the Fall 2024 J.D. application when it becomes available in September,” the law school reportedly told the Free Beacon. “It was inadvertently listed on the Law School’s website and has since been corrected.”
The Free Beacon shared screenshots of the video statement requirements on the website as of Monday morning before the school took them down.
Columbia Law School did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Archived webpages reviewed by Fox News Digital reveal the school required transfer students to submit video statements in their applications to the school last spring, before the Supreme Court ruling in June. Language expanding the requirement to “all” students was added in the month after the Supreme Court decision,” the outlet reported.
Some Columbia Law students were suspicious of the timing.
“The timing is so suspect, I have to wonder, are they that dumb?” a current Columbia Law student told the Free Beacon. “They’re not even trying to hide it.”
Richard Hanania, a former research fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, suggested the school was walking a fine line between keeping and breaking the law.
“Violating the law, or a hint of doing so, is bad press. Supreme Court has made their lives harder,” he tweeted.
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Activists demonstrate as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on a pair of affirmative action cases, Washington, D.C., Oct. 31, 2022. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
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Watchdog group Campus Reform has reported how some colleges are implementing new ways to ask about race in light of the Supreme Court ruling.
Rather than ask for a student’s race, Sarah Lawrence College in New York is now asking applicants for the upcoming semester how they will be personally impacted by the SCOTUS ruling.
“In the syllabus of a 2023 majority decision of the Supreme Court written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the author notes: ‘Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.’ Drawing upon examples from your life, a quality of your character, and/or a unique ability you possess, describe how you believe your goals for a college education might be impacted, influenced, or affected by the Court’s decision,” the prompt currently reads on the school’s admissions website.
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