Managing Slate’s Changes Regarding Race and Ethnicity Data
If you’re using Slate for your admissions and enrollment processes, you may have noticed that, as of July 12, race and ethnicity data that had been stored in the standard Slate race and ethnicity fields (e.g., race, hispanic) are no longer being displayed on the person record, the Reader or Slate application PDFs. This was a universal change made by Technolutions.
This means that race and ethnicity data will no longer display in Slate on the:
- Person record default dashboard
- Person record profile tab
- The Slate Reader default dashboard
- Personal information page of the auto application PDF
Although race and ethnicity data no longer display in these areas, these important data points are not lost forever. Institutions can still import and export race and ethnicity data.
(It’s important to note that, while colleges may not use a student’s race or ethnicity to confer an individual benefit on a student on the basis of their race—like an admission offer—there is nothing in the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the Harvard and UNC cases that prevents colleges from recruiting the students they want to recruit, or, furthermore, from storing data in their CRM about a student’s race or ethnicity, which is used for institutional reporting and planning.)
You still have options to customize the person record to display race and ethnicity data. To help you do that, we have put together the following tips:
Person Record Data
Create a custom tab on the person record, which will allow you to view, enter and edit the data. You can do this by configuring a person-page scoped form with fields that map to Slate standard fields for race ethnicity.
Create a custom person record dashboard that includes merge fields for the Slate standard fields for race ethnicity.
Consider setting read/write permissions on the custom tab in order to control which user roles can view and/or edit the data. Additionally, a filter can be added to a custom Dashboard to determine (a) which records it should populate on, and (b) the users who should be able to view the data.
Application and Reader Data
Although custom PDFs and custom Reader dashboard portals can be configured to display race and ethnicity data in the Reader, RHB recommends that institutions refrain from doing so in order to avoid raising any flags about your admission review process.
Please note that Technolutions may continue to make updates to Slate that affect how race and related ethnicity data display. We encourage institutions to actively monitor the Slate Community Forum for updates from Technolutions.
As always, we stand ready to help you navigate this new and ever-changing landscape.
