PROVIDENCE — Brown University sophomore Eliana Rivas Marte worried how the campus might change after the Supreme Court banned race-conscious admissions a year ago. This fall, her fears were realized when the class of incoming freshmen included significantly fewer students of color.
“It was very jarring, honestly, but not surprising,” Marte, who is from Boston and studying economics and education, said on a recent cloudy afternoon on this picturesque campus, which saw the number of students from historically underrepresented groups plunge 9 percentage points from a year ago. “Affirmative action was so important in ensuring that students of color were entering universities like the Ivy League’s, like Brown.”
Brown is among several top universities in New England to report sharp declines among students of color, particularly those who identify as Black and Hispanic, enrolling this fall.
Colleges such as Yale and Princeton have fared better so far. Higher education experts say it’s too soon to draw long-term conclusions based on the new data.
But interviews with students at Brown, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Amherst College revealed deep unease about the future of diversity on campuses, especially at elite institutions.
The students fear that fewer students of color could mean classes that lack wider perspectives from peers who hail from different backgrounds. Some were concerned about a decline of community and mentors from those who share similar experiences.
Others worried that if the trends continue, higher education could harken back to an era when students of color were excluded from elite institutions.
Clarissa Thorne-Disla, a Brown sophomore from New York City and a section editor at the Black publication The Black Star Journal, said she noticed a change on campus this fall even before the enrollment numbers were revealed.
“Walking around campus, being near the freshmen dorms, you could tell there’s significantly less Black students,” she said.
Thorne-Disla said having more Black and Hispanic students at Brown was important to show that access at Ivy League institutions was open to everyone. She lamented a possible future in which fewer students look like her.
“I guess we’ll just see less of ourselves around campus, which is really sad,” she said.
Such concerns extend beyond students of color.
Simon Rosenblum, 19, a Brown sophomore from Nashville studying physics and mathematics, worried that college life may become a less rich experience. High grades were typical at Brown, he said, but what added to the education was the different outlooks about the world that student diversity brings to classes.
“There is an abundance of people with good grades,” said Rosenblum, who is white. “That’s not a unique thing, but perspective is unique. Diversity is perspective.”
Brian Clark, Brown University’s spokesperson, said the college anticipated there could be fewer students of color admitted this year following the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“Brown’s commitment to implementing lawful measures to ensure a diverse, talented applicant pool and enrolled class was essential in avoiding a more precipitous decrease in racial and socioeconomic diversity,” Clark said in response to the Globe’s emailed questions.
To help admit more students of color, Clark said, the university will reintroduce standardized test scores as part of its requirement for admission that Clark said will be “interpreted in the context of a student’s background.” Brown will also ramp up college pathway programs and work with community-based organizations to help attract a more diverse group of students.
MIT also said the court decision was to blame for a drop of 9 percentage points in its cohort of first-year students who identify as Black, Hispanic, Native American, or Pacific Islander.
Naana Annan, an 18-year-old MIT freshman from Accra, Ghana, said the ruling last June, in two lawsuits challenging admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, made her question whether to attend college in the United States.
“It definitely did make me pause, but I was confident that it wouldn’t affect enrollment numbers that much. But unfortunately the opposite of that happened,” she said.
Annan said diversity on campus can help shape a more globally minded student body at institutions such as MIT.
“MIT, it’s an engineering school. We are making solutions. We are thinking about how we can make the world a better place. And the world is inhabited by so, so many different people and so many diverse people,” she said. “If they don’t have a seat at the table, then we will not be able to account for them when we are making these solutions.”
Elise Wingard, a senior at MIT from Miami studying physics and computer science, found it “disturbing” that the percentage of students of color, particularly among the incoming Black freshmen, fell from previous years. Diversity on campus has enriched her education, she said.
“I’ve learned a lot from students from different places around the world about their cultures,” said Wingard, who described herself as mixed race. “Also, just in general about how they approach problems and technically solving things. So I think that’s very important.”
Without affirmative action, she hopes the university can find ways to attract more students of color in years to come.
Stu Schmill, MIT’s dean of admissions and student financial services, acknowledged in a recent Globe interview that the decline in the numbers of students of color on campus raises concern on the Cambridge campus and reiterated the school’s commitment to diversity.
“I want to emphasize academic excellence and diversity coexist,” he said.
At Amherst College, Adam Johnson-Hill, a 21-year-old senior, noticed a shift during orientation. The university, based in Western Massachusetts, reported that 38 percent of this year’s incoming freshman class identified as students of color compared with 47 percent in 2023.
“I was seeing the students come on campus and there was a visible decline in the number of minority students of color,” Johnson-Hill, who is from New York City and a leader of the Black Student Union, said in a phone interview.
Johnson-Hill said part of why he enjoyed attending Amherst was the guidance and mentorship he received from a variety of older students over the years.
“For future classes, there is going to be a dearth of that given the fact that it’s just a less diverse class,” he said.
Michael Elliott, president of Amherst College, said in a letter to the university last month that the admission landscape, post-affirmative action, struck “at the heart of our efforts to build a diverse learning community.” He said the institution was committed to “educating exceptional students from all backgrounds.”
Amherst has a student body of about 1,900. Johnson-Hill said for some students who may be coming from other parts of the country, it can take time to adjust, making it even more critical to have a diverse campus.
“When you don’t have people who look like you, have a similar background as you, it can be more difficult to build community,” he said. “It helps to have people that are going through a similar experience with you or have gone through a similar experience to give advice.”
Omar Mohammed can be reached at omar.mohammed@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter (X) @shurufu.