"Colleges and universities across the country are scrambling to find legal means of maintaining the levels of diversity they would like to see."

"Though barred from actively using race as a factor, they will still 'see' race in signifiers such as name, ZIP code and, perhaps most notable, what students say about themselves in their essays. But this also means that this year’s class of high school seniors — the first to apply under the affirmative-action ban — must read the signals sent by colleges about how to articulate their case for admission correctly and effectively. They are living in a swirl of uncertainty, confusion and misinformation about an admissions process that has suddenly been made more opaque and bewildering. Rather than clarifying the role of race in the application process, the court has instead created a new burden for students: They must now decide whether, and how, to make race a part of their pitch for admission...."

 
From "Affirmative Action Is Over. Should Applicants Still Mention Their Race? The first high school seniors to apply to college since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision are trying to sort through a morass of conflicting guidance" (NYT).

The answer is yes, but The New York Times is determined to make the "swirl of uncertainty, confusion and misinformation" more "opaque and bewildering." It's the ongoing argument that the Supreme Court has made a terrible mistake. 

As this article — and every other article on this subject — points out, the Supreme Court's opinion explicitly says it shouldn't be "construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise."

By clouding the question, the NYT burdens non-white applicants, who shouldn't have to feel they might be doing something wrong by discussing their race. But clouding the question is part of critiquing the Court, and that is, apparently, the priority.