“Without affirmative action, I might not be here at Bates,” Emily Gonzalez, a Latina student, told the Press Herald last fall. “Other students of color might not be here either.”

The understanding of Gonzalez and her counterparts, thinking ahead to the Supreme Court decision that last week effectively ruled out race-conscious admissions practices by U.S. colleges and universities, is supported by the available data.

Now it falls to those colleges and universities to take their own steps to make campuses less exclusive, less elite and generally more reflective of the nation.

The response to it will depend on the will and organization of the school in question. Early commitments by Maine’s leading liberal arts colleges leave us cautiously optimistic that they’re up to the task.

Leaders of Bates, Bowdoin and Colby colleges pledged to come up with other ways to remediate inequality and intervene in the application and enrollment process.

A statement from Bates read: “We will take this opportunity to do what we do best: think creatively and experiment with new strategies consistent with the law that will allow us to continue to craft a class with diverse identities, life experiences, interests, and perspectives.”

It was echoed by a statement from Bowdoin – “We will never back away from our commitment to build and sustain a truly diverse community” – as well as from Colby, which said the school “will be focusing on how, within the new legal framework, we can continue to build excellence through diversity.”

As resigned and discouraged as critics of the court’s decision may be feeling, there is an element of opportunity here.

Institutions and prospective students alike would do well to remember that affirmative action is one of the tools available to colleges wishing to strengthen their commitment to a diverse student body, but it should never have been regarded as the only tool.

This is the potential silver lining of this and any future Supreme Court rulings that might be regarded as “seismic” – they focus minds on specifics. In stripping back long relied-on and wielded precedent, the ruling forces fresh appraisal of the best and most effective means of shutting down preferential treatment for applicants.

Unlike the corrosive and immediate effects of the Dobbs decision on abortion access last June – which set in motion a series of major legal and regulatory responses nationwide – the affirmative action ruling is likely to result in more gradual and subtle change. If race is off the table, proxies for race can be attended to and other forms of outreach and guarantees can be deployed.

Just ask schools in California, which had to claw their way back from a state vote banning affirmative action in 1996. At UCLA, for example, Black and Latino student populations plummeted by almost half after the policy change. After 25 years and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment – in, for example, an admissions process that takes into account a student’s special skills and achievements, their circumstances and where their high school was located – those levels were restored.

University of California officials, representing 10 campuses across the state, asked Supreme Court justices not to rule against affirmative action in an amicus brief submitted last summer.

By choosing not to heed their insight, the Supreme Court is forcing all schools with a vested interest in maintaining and building on diversity – and no school should fall outside this category – down this challenging road.

With the right, concerted effort and hard, time-intensive work, structural inequality can be remedied. The search for the most effective alternatives starts now.

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