Vance calls for college, university antitrust investigation

U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance wants the U.S. Department of Justice to step in after challenging colleges and universities to abide by a recent Supreme Court decision to end affirmative action admissions.

Vance, R-Ohio, said near-identical responses to a letter he sent from nine of the 10 colleges and universities – including Kenyon and Oberlin colleges in Ohio – showed coordination and potential collusive behavior.

In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, Vance asked for antitrust inquiries and raised concerns over “unlawful coordination among competing colleges and universities” regarding admissions practices.

As previously reported by The Center Square, Vance warned the eight Ivy League schools, along with Kenyon and Oberlin, threatening an investigation if those schools plan to attempt to get around the recent ruling.

Vance said presidents of those schools made statements he said indicated plans to defy the court’s ruling and continue to focus on race during the admissions process.

He asked those presidents what procedures will be implemented to ensure records are retained, what instructions are going to staff to preserve records for a potential investigation, whether they have been advised not to preserve records, and what previous admission practices will now be forbidden.

“To my surprise, none of the schools that received my letter on July 6 responded to these queries in good faith,” Vance said in his letter to the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department. “Instead, each school responded with generalized and dismissive statements. Reading through the responsive letters, I was struck by their uncanny similarity, both in substance and structure.”

Vance received responses from nine of the 10 and said each was roughly the same length, nearly all were sent the same day, each promised to comply with the court’s ruling and most ignored questions about document retention.

“It is hard to believe that the schools responding to my letter could achieve such remarkable parallels in the absence of coordination or collusion,” Vance’s letter said. “It would be difficult enough to believe that, acting independently, nine separate colleges and universities would all choose not to respond to my questions substantively, one by one. It is nearly impossible to believe that they would do so using the same structure, vocabulary, tone, and brevity.”