Michelle F. Blair, another student-organizer from the Kennedy School, said that those registered for the bus are primarily graduate students who recognize the gravity of the issue under debate.

“I think the impact this Supreme Court case could have is profound. We’re going to go down there and make it known,” Blair said.

The students will depart Cambridge at 3:30 p.m. and, after a ten hour drive, sleep at sites provided by volunteers, Yepes said.

They will meet tomorrow morning to rally outside of the Supreme Court while the oral arguments take place, and then participate in a national march from the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial around noon.

The Black Students’ Union at MIT has also arranged three buses to travel to D.C. this afternoon, according to one of the organizers, Kasetta V. Coleman. As of yesterday, eight Harvard students were registered to ride on the MIT buses, Coleman said.

At 10 a.m. tomorrow, the Court will hear arguments in the cases of Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger. Oral arguments before the Supreme Court traditionally last one-hour per case.

Michigan’s undergraduate admissions decisions are based on a point system, in which minority students are given a 20 point boost. The law school’s policy more closely resembles that of Harvard College, which says only that race is considered as a factor in admissions.

Twenty-five years ago—the last time the Supreme Court heard a case involving affirmative action in higher education—Harvard’s admissions policy was cited as a model.

In that case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the court prohibited the use of quotas in admissions but upheld some forms of affirmative action.

That ruling is said to be in jeopardy in the current cases.

Summers and Tribe wrote in their op-ed that the result of the Bakke decision has become “deeply woven in the fabric of our society.”

—Staff writer Jenifer L. Steinhardt can be reached at steinhar@fas.harvard.edu.