Students, staff and leadership from Kamehameha Schools, along with Native Hawaiian practitioners and their supporters, gathered at ʻIolani Palace to rally against the latest legal threat to the school’s admissions policy.
Hundreds attended the Tuesday morning rally in response to a lawsuit filed Monday that challenges the private school’s longstanding policy of giving preference to Native Hawaiians.
“We will fight these legal challenges to our admissions policy with all the resources available to us. We are warriors. We fight, we win,” said Crystal Kauilani Rose, the chair of the school’s Board of Trustees, at the rally. “We won 20 years ago. We understand the law and we understand the facts, and the law and the facts are on our side.”
The lawsuit filed this week by a Virginia-based group called Students for Fair Admissions, on behalf of two anonymous non-Hawaiian families, argues that Kamehameha’s “race-based admissions policy is illegal.”…