The Supreme Court’s holding that the admissions processes at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are crosswise with the Constitution certainly got the attention — much of it discontent — of the campus at Cambridge.

The Harvard administration “did a good job of responding to concern within the student body, but that’s not going to reduce that concern,” a Harvard College student from the class of 2023, Ryan Tierney, who also served as president of the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, said. He added: “There’s quite a large uproar.”

In a university-wide missive sent out moments after the Supreme Court’s 6-to-3 decision came down, Harvard’s president, Lawrence Bacow, signaled the school’s intent to “determine how to preserve, consistent with the Court’s new precedent, our essential values.” The president, though, promised, “We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision.” 

Harvard students are voicing outrage on SideChat, an anonymous online chat forum with a Harvard-exclusive hub. Dozens of memes posted Thursday have imagined a dystopian campus with an overwhelmingly white student body. Some users are even demanding an end to legacy admissions, with one writing: “Why are they targeting AA” — meaning affirmative action — “and not legacy if they believe in so-called ‘meritocracy??’”

The Harvard student body, though, is not all of one mind. 

“It was pretty obvious that Harvard was systematically discriminating against white and Asian applicants,” a student from the class of 2021, Anthony Alvarez, noted. “The decision was pretty straightforward from a legal standpoint — my friend group definitely doesn’t think it’s like the apocalypse.”

A student from the class of 2022 and a former member of the Harvard Republican Club, Patrick Adolphus, agrees. He reasons that “the intent behind affirmative action might be noble, but it doesn’t necessarily achieve its intended purpose to remedy the effects of slavery.” 

The opinions expressed on SideChat and dominating the campus conversation “are not fully reflective of what your average Democrat thinks,” Mr. Adolphus said. “Harvard is an echo chamber of very progressive ideals.”

In a New York Times poll, 58 percent of Democrats and 78 percent of Republicans said that private colleges and universities should not be able to use race as a factor in admissions. 

Some Harvard students are speculating on SideChat that future admissions applications will include a short essay with the prompt: “How has race affected your life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise?”

Other students expect that an admissions system based on socioeconomic factors will become the norm. Mr. Tierney predicted that the “next step for Harvard and other administrations is developing an admissions process that would consider socioeconomic diversity, which, based on the American demographic, would correlate to racial diversity.”

Mr. Tierney imagines a greater push for holistic review in higher education, expanding upon many top universities’ removal of standardized testing requirements during the pandemic. He speculates: “They may be able to create a more equitable system or at least replicate the equities that were created with affirmative action.”

Mr. Adolphus has long supported such a system. “We should help those who actually need it, as opposed to people who look like they need it,” he asserts.

This emphasis on meritocracy echoes the opinion of the chairman of the New York Republican State Committee, Ed Cox, a Harvard Law grad, who said in a statement, “Today’s decision takes us a big step closer to an America in which citizens are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

A few Harvard students are expressing hope — albeit anonymously — on SideChat. “Affirmative action isn’t what gets Black, Hispanic, and other POC” — persons of color — “students on campus, it’s genuine drive and talent,” one user declared. “If future applicants are as amazing as everyone I’ve met, then killing AA won’t kill diversity.”