On the oboe player - Adam Liptak in NYT:

‘Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked whether it would be permissible for minority students to write essays describing their experiences with race discrimination. Patrick Strawbridge, a lawyer for Students for Fair Admission, the group challenging the programs, said that was fine.
“What we object to,” he said, “is a consideration of race and race by itself.” Personal essays are different, he said. “It tells you something about the character and the experience of the applicant other than their skin color,” he said.
Similarly, Mr. Strawbridge said, an Asian American student might write about traveling to a grandparent’s home country.
Chief Justice Roberts said that such a student would not be a “very savvy applicant” because “the one thing his essay is going to show is that he’s Asian American, and those are the people who are discriminated against.” Seth P. Waxman, a lawyer for Harvard, later said that it did not discriminate against Asian American applicants, though he did not contest that on average they received lower ratings for personal qualities at an early stage of the admissions process.
Mr. Waxman said that many factors contributed to whether students were admitted.
“Race for some highly qualified applicants can be the determinative factor,” he said, “just as being an oboe player in a year in which the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra needs an oboe player will be the tip.” Chief Justice Roberts seemed taken aback. “Yeah,” he said. “We did not fight a Civil War about oboe players. We did fight a Civil War to eliminate racial discrimination, and that’s why it’s a matter of considerable concern.”’

Read the article here.

Luck and fate are once again everything. You were an oboe player at the right time. And the right place.

The remark by Roberts about the not so savvy applicant is hilarious as well.

I’m afraid that affirmative active, for many reasons, is on the way out. And unlike the Roe v Wade ruling, this one will be met with indifference. The medicine after all turned out be not that effective, and the side effects were unpleasant.