The Supreme Court recently overturned affirmative action for underrepresented minorities in college admissions. Those who saw it as a win for fairness cheered.

But now there's a similar challenge that may hit closer to home, and it will be interesting to see how many of those in the fairness crowd are still on board.

Three days after the court's decision in the cases brought by Students for Fair Admissions Inc. against the University of North Carolina and Harvard College, Boston-area advocacy groups filed a complaint with the Department of Education requesting an investigation into another controversial practice. They argued that Harvard's admissions policies discriminate against Black, Hispanic and Asian applicants in favor of less-qualified white candidates who have alumni and donor connections.

Ironically, their point is supported by data that came out of the lawsuit that dismantled affirmative action. Harvard had released years of records as part of the lawsuit that ended up before the Supreme Court. Researchers found that the data revealed that legacy students were eight times more likely to be admitted, and nearly 70% were white.

A study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 43% of white students admitted to Harvard were recruited athletes, legacy students, children of faculty and staff, or on the dean's interest list -- applicants whose parents or relatives have donated to Harvard.

Of the white students admitted from those four categories, 75% of them would have been rejected if they had been treated as white students without the special considerations, the study said.

Even after the court's decision, affirmative action for mostly white and wealthy students still stands. Yet everyone knows the students did nothing to earn this advantage.

Not a single other country in the world has legacy preferences in admissions.

America's longstanding tolerance for this particular unfairness begs the question: Why have conservative groups been unwilling to challenge legacy and donor preferences along with their fight against race-based preferences?

Unearned advantages -- bestowed by chance, at birth, mostly to white students -- have been accepted for generations, but a preference for Blacks and other underrepresented minorities for a few decades has provoked years of legal challenges.

We all know that giving the richest people in America affirmative action at the expense of others who are more qualified is ethically indefensible.

In the ongoing war over fairness in the admissions game, this battle has renewed life after the court's recent decision.

An Associated Press survey of the nation's most selective colleges last year found that legacy students in the freshman class ranged from 4% to 23%. This tidbit from the AP report was even more revealing: At four schools -- Notre Dame, the University of Southern California, Cornell and Dartmouth -- legacy students outnumbered Black students.

Who could have known.

On several occasions, white parents have lamented to me how difficult it will be for their child to gain admission at an elite school or graduate program "as a white male" or "as a white girl."

It's a common refrain during college application season. The unspoken part of that grievance is that their child is being disadvantaged by nonwhite students. But even with affirmative action, the percentage of Black students at Ivy League colleges has hovered around 6% for years.

Perhaps those parents were blaming the wrong group all along.

The defenses I've heard from those who have benefited from legacy admissions are, "I was still highly qualified for admission" and "I also worked hard."

Great. Let's see how you would fare without a thumb on the scale.

I say this as a parent of a child who is a legacy student at my own alma mater: It's time to get rid of the practice. It goes against the mission of higher education.

A conservative group found Asian plaintiffs to bring the case that overturned affirmative action. As my husband and I are Asian Americans, our children may ostensibly benefit from this decision -- statistically, lower percentages of Asians with qualifying scores and grades are accepted into elite universities. But I believe our children, and all students, will be worse off for having fewer classmates from diverse perspectives and backgrounds on their campuses. That's largely been the outcome at other places that have already gotten rid of considerations of race in admissions.

There are already several elite institutions that have decided that legacy status merits no weight in its admissions: MIT, CalTech, Amherst College, Johns Hopkins University, Pomona, the University of California system and the University of Texas.

To all the remaining universities that claim to value diversity, and to the people who have been clamoring for fairness: Here's your moment to prove it.

Facebook should have killed the high school reunion years ago.

So why do some people, myself included, still show up?

For those of us who came of age when a "friend" was someone you primarily saw in person, the advent of social media made it easy for us to reconnect with long-lost classmates. With a few clicks, you could see how kindly (or otherwise) the passage of time had treated someone.

Of course, social media often presents a version of life that may be a slight distance from day-to-day reality. But curiosity and comparison aren't reasons enough to face your adolescent memories in real life. This might be, though: Reconnecting with those who have known us through our journeys can be a boon for our mental, emotional and physical health.

Reconnecting with old friends has well-documented benefits: It lowers stress, anxiety and loneliness while lifting mood and feelings of connection and belonging. And spending time in person with those with whom we have a strong emotional connection offers an even greater boost than any digital connection.

Think of how you feel when you come across a social media update from an old friend. It may bring a momentary smile. A text exchange is more engaging and enjoyable. A phone call adds the benefit of a human voice with tone and expression. But sitting with someone -- making eye contact, responding to body language cues, comforting and supporting one another -- is an entirely different experience.

I have a spotty record with my own reunions: I skipped the 10th because I was hugely pregnant, attended the 20th and missed the 30th. This is partly because I graduated from a massive suburban high school in Texas with a senior class of around 800 students.

A small fraction of our class showed up at the 20th, mostly the popular kids. I was never part of that crowd. I had made sure that a few people from my friend group were also planning to attend. We went to dinner, reminisced about old times and caught up on one another's lives.

Mostly, we laughed.

Those encounters led to something extraordinary. I realized how resilient certain bonds are, regardless of the vagaries of time. It also reminded my friends and me how much we had grown and survived. Just like in high school, we didn't need the big crowd to have a good time.

If you are with your people, that's enough.

Several years after that reunion, one of my dear high school friends unexpectedly lost her husband. A small group of us flew from different parts of the country to be with her.

Another six years went by before we found a reason to meet again: That friend was getting remarried. But last summer, right before the wedding, I tested positive for COVID, and the other two friends had their flights canceled due to airline disruptions. We had to postpone our mini reunion.

A few months ago, one member of the group texted the rest of us and suggested trying again. It was the nudge we needed. Within days, we managed to nail down a weekend that worked for everyone and bought our tickets.

Last month, we met in Boise, Idaho, at one of our friend's homes for a long weekend of hiking, talking, eating and drinking.

Mostly, we talked.

Even though we've seen one another just a handful of times over the past 30 years, their company felt so comforting and safe. We could share troubles, offer counsel and make fun of each other like we did as teenagers -- but with a lot more grace, compassion and wisdom.

It felt like reconnecting with a part of myself.

We're getting to a point in our lives when we realize how quickly it all goes by and how dramatically life can change in an instant.

Maybe we all needed this reminder: If there's a person whose friendship you valued in high school, and you've lost touch, reach out and tell them. If you've stayed in contact via social media or texts or occasional phone calls, but haven't actually seen each other for years, make a plan to meet now.

Time is precious.

Friendship even more so.

"What if we take a road trip to Las Vegas?"

Robert Haubrich of Valley Park, Missouri, posed the question to his 19-year-old daughter, Bailee, earlier this spring -- completely out of the blue.

They could head to Los Angeles after that, he said, then maybe Seattle and end up in Canada.

Bailee thought he was joking. The farthest west they had ever driven was Kansas City.

"What are you planning?" she said.

Haubrich, 53, had no plan. He just knew he and his daughter had to get out of west St. Louis County, where they were staying with his in-laws, and that they weren't ready to go back home yet.

His wife and Bailee's mom, Susan, had died suddenly of a heart attack at their home in January.

She was 48.

Susan was the backbone of their family: a stay-at-home mom, her daughter's best friend, her husband's rock of 26 years.

She died within a matter of minutes. Her death upended their lives.

Bailee took a leave of absence from her pre-med studies at St. Louis University. Haubrich, a banker, began experiencing chest pains himself -- from stress, anxiety and grief -- and took a medical leave from work.

He had no idea what their lives would look like without Susan.

Maybe they just needed to head west.

"Let's go," Bailee said.

A few days before her death, Susan had told Bailee to look out for blue butterflies.

"When you see one, you're on the right path and everything is going to be OK," she'd said. Bailee recalls the moment when she was looking at urns to hold her mom's ashes. She was still in shock, devastated and reeling from raw grief.

In the showroom, there was an urn with a blue butterfly on it.

Susan had told her husband that her dream, after he retired, was to buy an RV and drive across the country together. So Bailee and her dad packed their Nissan Rogue to the brim and took Susan's ashes with them.

"We needed to figure out if we could survive on our own without Susan," Haubrich said.

He and Bailee got on the road without a single hotel reservation. Their only goal was to drive until they got tired and pull over to see any sight that grabbed their attention.

So many places drew them: Sedona, Arizona; Moab, Utah; the beaches along the Pacific Ocean. And over and over, they would run into the same image -- in a painting hanging in a cafe, on a postcard, or fluttering nearby: a blue butterfly.

"There were multiple times when I felt like she was right there with us," Bailee said.

And, for the first time since Susan died, she and her father could really be present for each other. Before the trip, they had been so wrapped up in their own grief, but on the road, they reconnected.

Every day, they saw something new. They shared moments of awe -- in the desert, at the mountains and by the ocean -- and they made it through unexpected turbulence along the way. Once, they drove for miles through Yellowstone National Park only to realize the road ahead was completely shut down. They just turned around and drove back. They survived a surprise hailstorm. In Spokane, they saw a sign for a Journey concert that evening. They bought tickets right before the show began and watched one of Susan's favorite bands. How fitting that their journey led them to her Journey.

The lack of a set plan or agenda offered them freedom. Bailee realized they could still make memories together in honor of her mom.

Their road trip ended up taking them 8,265 miles, into two countries and across 14 states, over 25 days.

After Susan's death dismantled their previous plans, the father and daughter learned together how to find joy on their new unmarked path.

They are still figuring out how to navigate life without Susan and deal with the constant grief.

But they say they feel like they've gotten a message from her: You're going to be OK.