Anthony: You’re right, which is why Wayne State must be watched closely, along with every other public university in Michigan. If WSU goes too far in this direction, its race neutrality will become suspect and the school will become vulnerable to a legal challenge.

This may be a good place to note that although class-based preference schemes are in certain ways better than race-based ones, they share a weakness: They promote students to levels of academia for which they haven’t been adequately prepared, and therefore their supposed beneficiaries suffer. Socioeconomic preferences represent an improvement over what exists now, and they are a useful talking point for conservatives who squirm in the face of criticism from civil-rights liberals, but they are also deeply flawed and ought to be resisted.