Rural gets mention in lawsuit faulting Harvard's admission policies, but is it just a proxy for whiteness?

This story has been making big headlines all week, but today was the first day I noticed multiple mentions of rural students--specifically rurality as an aspect of the much sought-after diversity in higher education.  The headline in the NY Times today is "Harvard's Admissions Process, Once Secret, is Unveiled in Federal Court."   One of the secrets, apparently, is that being from a "rural" place still matters.  I say "still" because back when UC Regents v. Bakke was decided 40 years ago, Justice Powell wrote, citing Harvard's admission policy (as a model for what would be appropriate for public universities):

In practice, this new definition of diversity has meant that race has been a factor in some admission decisions. When the Committee on Admissions reviews the large middle group of applicants who are ‘admissible’ and deemed capable of doing good work in their courses, the race of an applicant may tip the balance in his favor just as geographic origin or a life spent on a farm may tip the balance in other candidates’ cases. A farm boy from Idaho can bring something to Harvard College that a Bostonian cannot offer. Similarly, a black student can usually bring something that a white person cannot offer.  (emphasis added)

Bakke, at 316-17.  While the word "rural" is not used here; "farm" is a proxy for that characteristic, that life experience.  Read more analysis of how rurality plays in college admissions more recently, from my 2015 law review article here.

This quote from today's NYTimes story recounts what happened at the trial in Boston this week:

There is the longtime dean of admissions, William Fitzsimmons (Harvard Class of 1967), on the stand, grilled on whether rural students receive a leg up over urban students. They do.

Something tells me that the observers are likely to invoke rurality as a proxy for whiteness, urbanicity for blackness, as happened with another controversy over the favoring of rural folks earlier this year, that one regarding SNAP work requirements.  That conflation of rurality with whiteness is unfortunate because, among other reasons, it misleads:  many of the poorest rural folks in the nation are Latinx, American Indian, and African American.  Just check out the nation's persistent poverty map.

Back to the NYTimes story, later comes this, following a comparison of Harvard's admissions standards to the secret formula for Coca-Cola:

Some, but not all, of the secrets have buttressed Harvard’s elite reputation. 

It casts a wide net for students, aggressively recruiting those in “sparse country,” predominantly rural areas that yield few applications. It considers a dizzying array of factors, from SAT scores (the higher the better) to athletic ability (recruited athletes receive a big advantage) to interviews (be “effervescent,” “fun,” but “mature”) and more. A lack of deep pockets won’t hinder a hopeful and might even help one’s chances, testimony showed.  (emphasis added)

I can't help wonder if geography--and rurality in particular--will be noted in the outcome of this present case--as it was in Bakke--even though rurality was not a characteristic that loomed large in the pleadings by either side.

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.