A University of Iowa music student beat thousands of competitors to win a nationwide national anthem singing contest — a rare, unapologetic act of patriotism on a campus at a time when higher education is busy dismantling every standard it once claimed to uphold.
Lily Schloss, who studies vocal performance and music education at Iowa, won Gray Media's Star-Spangled Sing-Off with her rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" performed at a university gymnastics meet. Her prize: a trip to Nashville to record the anthem for broadcast on Gray stations nationwide. Schloss has performed the anthem roughly ten times a year for years, developing her own arrangement with what she called "special little riffs" and different keys.
"I'm shocked," Schloss said after learning she'd won. "I thought I had a lot of people voting, and I got texts every day, 'I voted for you,' which is great, but I was like, no way, this is a national competition."
While Schloss was winning a national competition by singing about the land of the free, the broader academy she inhabits was deep into a retreat from anything resembling accountability or distinctiveness. Forbes reported this week that a wave of prestigious universities — including the University of Miami, Tulane, Washington University in St. Louis, and UNC Chapel Hill — have confirmed they will no longer require supplemental application essays for the 2026–27 admissions cycle. Cornell retired its university-wide essay. TCU and UVA eliminated supplements last year.
The stated reason is "reducing stress." UGA's admissions office wrote that "we believe the one essay response gives us what we need in our evaluation process." The real reason is more telling. Forbes noted that the changes follow the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling striking down race-conscious admissions. Schools had reworked supplemental prompts that explicitly invited students to reflect on identity and background — prompts that became legally and politically dangerous after the ruling. Retiring supplements, Forbes reported, "allows institutions to avoid the minefields that can come with more personal, identity-related disclosures." In plain English: the academy doesn't want to defend its admissions practices in court, so it's scrapping the paper trail.
Generative AI has given institutions convenient cover. Duke University explicitly pointed to AI-generated writing as a reason for minimizing essay importance in admissions starting in 2024–25. Essays no longer receive a numerical score at Duke. The tools meant to democratize information have instead given universities a reason to stop evaluating individual merit altogether.
Schloss said she hopes to become a music teacher while continuing to sing. She chose to master a demanding piece of American tradition and put it before the public on its own terms. The institutions around her are choosing the opposite — eliminating standards, dodging legal scrutiny, and hoping nobody notices the silence where excellence used to be.
One student proved patriotism still lives on campus. The open question is whether the institutions charged with cultivating it will ever stop trying to smother it.
