Staff Reports
The Justice Department just dropped a bomb on Ohio State University’s College of Medicine. In plain English: federal investigators say the school ran admissions practices that favored some racial groups and shut out others. This isn’t a vague accusation. The Civil Rights Division put numbers and formal findings on the table, and the message is clear — if you take federal money, you play by federal rules.
What the DOJ actually found
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said its review of recent admission cycles shows a two-part scheme. First, some screeners who knew applicants’ race produced outcomes that heavily favored Black applicants over Asian applicants with the same credentials. Second, OSU used a separate “side door” pathway that let certain applicants skip scoring and interviews — and through that door Black applicants were far likelier to get in than White or Asian applicants. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon called the practice plainly illegal under Title VI as shaped by the Supreme Court’s SFFA decision. The department says it will try to force a fix, and will sue if necessary.
Numbers don’t lie — and they sting
The DOJ’s letter included stark statistics: screened Black applicants were roughly 2.8 times as likely to be admitted as equally qualified Asian applicants. Through the “side door” in the most recent cycles, no Asian applicants were admitted while Black applicants were admitted at much higher odds than White applicants. Those aren’t anecdotal complaints. They’re patterns that point to race-conscious decision-making, even if the school calls it a “holistic” review. When an admissions system produces results like that, the finger of causation is hard to ignore.
Why this matters beyond another campus fight
This isn’t about safe spaces or woke slogans on a campus newsletter. It’s about who treats your loved one in an ER or defends you in court. Medical schools get mountains of federal dollars. That means the federal government gets to demand compliance with civil-rights law. If a school plays games with admissions, we should not shrug and call it virtue. We should demand competence and fairness. Merit and patient safety should not be bargaining chips in a social-engineering experiment.
What comes next — and what should happen
Ohio State says it will contest the DOJ’s findings. Fine. But talk is cheap. The DOJ has a clear playbook: negotiate a binding fix or file suit. Federal funding should be the stick that changes behavior if persuasion fails. If universities want to run race-conscious programs, they should be prepared to lose federal dollars or face legal consequences. Americans deserve medical schools that pick the best candidates on skill and performance, not on checklists or quotas. The DOJ moved from investigation to formal findings — now let’s see if it has the resolve to finish the job.
