New College Diversity Laws: Banning Racial Exclusion?
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| Title: | New College Diversity Laws: Banning Racial Exclusion? |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Adam, Michelle |
| Source: | Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed for Quick Review. Nov 2006 72(3):31-36. |
| Availability: | Prakken Publications. 832 Phoenix Drive, P.O. Box 8623, Ann Arbor, MI 48108. Tel: 734-975-2800; Fax: 734-975-2787; Web site: http://www.eddigest.com/ |
| Peer Reviewed: | N |
| Page Count: | 6 |
| Publication Date: | 2006 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Descriptive |
| Education Level: | Higher Education |
| Descriptors: | Race, Higher Education, Universities, Court Litigation, Affirmative Action, Disproportionate Representation, Hispanic American Students, African American Students, Access to Education, Student Financial Aid, Human Capital, Racial Discrimination |
| Geographic Terms: | Illinois, Michigan |
| ISSN: | 0013-127X |
| Abstract: | Race-exclusive programs of American universities and colleges, created initially to level the playing fields for under-represented students in higher education, are now considered discriminatory and illegal. The concerns levied against higher education institutions have been in response to two 2003 U.S. Supreme Court cases on race and admission at the University of Michigan. Although the cases did not ban using race in admissions to higher education, they left the law unclear. As a consequence, not only are groups and the Department of Justice interpreting the law in a manner that views many race-exclusive programs as illegal and putting pressure on schools to open their programs to all; legal departments within universities nationwide have preemptively advocated changing their race-exclusive programs to avoid lawsuits down the road. In the meantime, the country will need to keep any eye on the numbers to judge the growth (or lack thereof) of minority representation in higher education. Only time will tell whether universities and colleges can find a new way to ensure diverse representation despite changes in the means of getting there. |
| Abstractor: | ERIC |
| Entry Date: | 2007 |
| Access URL: | https://www.eddigest.com/index.php |
| Accession Number: | EJ769363 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwFRSx2RKDVZwPeHVa6mbgCpAAAA4jCB3wYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHRMIHOAgEAMIHIBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDMGls730InwmY7ZpwAIBEICBmj4tR7x-HtMLTG31YdLgAehPVBlUOnK9Cs0nk3xMCBjX--fBUr3oCeHeiacuqo_KuRdoFmZr0gq-emxow1egzAUTTxbL5PYq7iXg0Oga5U1eDgKGTSoIV10ytc8lA1dPzwOUNBoaFSOoOtPa8PSjgOdBDy4hYlpQXXzQc7592gI1vmvk7fJTZvGbpNk9951JTtpP41U-9fhUJB4= Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0022970256;edd01nov.06;2006Dec18.14:24;v2.2.460</anid> <title id="AN0022970256-1">New College Diversity Laws: Banning Racial Exclusion? </title> <p>BARELY a year ago, Southern Illinois University (SIU) received a call from the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. The reason for the call was to investigate fellowship, faculty hiring, and other employment programs then in use at the school.</p> <p>After several months of investigation', the division filed a complaint against the school, claiming the university in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in employment based on race, sex, national origin, or religion. The federal government cited three programs — PROMPT (Proactive Recruitment of Multicultural Professionals for Tomorrow), BRIDGE (Bridge to Doctor-, ate), and the Graduate Deans Program — as violating equal opportunity laws because they were open only to specific minority and women groups.</p> <p>In simple terms, race-exclusive programs, created initially to level the playing fields for under-represented students in higher education, were now considered discriminatory and illegal. No longer could SIU rely on race-exclusive programs to alleviate the low numbers of minority students and women at these levels or in specific programs.</p> <p>SIU's predicament wasn't and isn't unique. During the past two to three years, close to 200 schools with similar programs have been contacted by groups like the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO), followed by, in specific instances, the U.S. Department of justice.</p> <hd id="AN0022970256-2">Two Cases Confused</hd> <p>The concerns levied against higher education institutions have been in response to two 2003 U.S. Supreme Court cases on race and admission at the University of Michigan. Although the cases did not ban using race in admissions to higher education, they left the law unclear.</p> <p>As a consequence, not only are groups and the Department of Justice interpreting the law in a manner that views many race-exclusive programs as illegal — and putting pressure on schools to open their programs to all, legal departments within universities nationwide have preemptively advocated changing their race-exclusive programs to avoid lawsuits down the road.</p> <p>According to national news sources, Williams, Indiana University, Carnegie Mellon, Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Michigan State, Ohio State, Yale, Harvard, University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign, Northwestern, and MIT are among the countless colleges that have opened their race-exclusive programs to all students.</p> <p>"I view this attack on programs for African-Americans and Latinos as a threatening development," said Theodore M. Shaw, president and counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund: "A lot of the programs began primarily for black students in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, and they quickly expanded to include Hispanic students.</p> <p>"The whole notion was that there was a history of discrimination against minorities, and we needed to do something about it if we were going to bring them into the fullness of opportunities. We still have a lot of the disparities in education and employment in higher education. These programs have been working, but there is still a lot to be done."</p> <hd id="AN0022970256-3">Not Racist</hd> <p>According to Shaw, "There is this notion that anything that is race conscious is racist. But it's not. When these programs are opened up to all students, they will end up being majority-white programs because, if you can't be conscious about including minority students, there is no certainty that you can reach them."</p> <p>Within SIU graduate programs, 1% of students are black and only 2% are Hispanic — not much reason for concern that minority populations are taking opportunities away from whites. Yet, SIU couldn't afford to fight a lawsuit against the federal government — and spend millions that could otherwise go toward scholarships for students — so, it reached a consent decree with the Justice Department to allow nonminorities and men access to their graduate fellowships originally created for minorities and women. (It had originally held steadfast, despite CEO warnings to make changes to its programs or face a federal government investigation.)</p> <hd id="AN0022970256-4">Threatening to Sue</hd> <p>This investigation was prompted by a conservative group (CEO) that sent out letters to all Illinois universities. "Most made changes, but we did not," said David Gross, government and media relations assistant to the president. "We were given a letter threatening to sue us for employment discrimination and telling us that the fellowships we had were essentially employment."</p> <p>PROMPT, initially created for underrepresented groups, has provided 78 fellowships since its inception in 2000, students receiving stipends of about $10,000 and tuition money worth about $2,000 per semester. The BRIDGE Fellowship, a National Science Foundation program, provided minority students 27 SIU fellowships in the past two years. These students individually received $30,000 in stipends and $2,000 in tuition assistance to help them with the transition to graduate school. The final program, the Graduate Deans Fellowship, has traditionally been open to minorities and women, with $ 15,000 individual stipend money and $2,000 for tuition that has gone to 27 recipients since 2000.</p> <p>"In all likelihood, we will see white applicants to all of these three programs now. We assume there will be participation from all backgrounds," said Gross. "We can no longer target underrepresented groups. Now our leadership has to promote recruitment and increase applications to all of our graduate programs."</p> <p>While opening minority-exclusive programs to all students will limit the fellowships available to minority students, SIU has been looking closely at all its graduate assistantship programs and discovering that many should and could draw more minority students. "We think this is an opportunity. The president is trying to raise private dollars for scholarships and is looking for ways to increase assistantships," said Gross. "We are going to do a lot more college fairs than ever before and hire more recruiters. We are not backing out. We think in the end this will increase the diversity on our campus."</p> <hd id="AN0022970256-5">Adapting to Change</hd> <p>As with SIU, other schools, like Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania and the University of California (UC) system, are finding ways to operate within the legal constraints or legal opinions around anti-aff irmative-action-type laws. At Carnegie Mellon, minority scholarships have been opened to all students, and minority orientation programs are now fully inclusive.</p> <p>"We had ethnic minority weekends, and now we have 'celebration of diversity' weekends," said Mike Steidel, director of admissions at Carnegie Mellon. "It has become about establishing relationships and support systems that are important to everyone. Students recognize that others care about diversity, and they have built a stronger network of friends."</p> <hd id="AN0022970256-6">Not Just a Label</hd> <p>A benefit to having scholarships open to all students now is that the school can look at the entire picture of a candidate, not just a label. "We look at what they've done academically, but also at what else they carry with them — whether they are first-generation college students, or whether they received little support from their high schools, etc.," said Steidel. "I feet we have created a community that thinks about diversity in a broader way. We have people who are committed to diversity now, and we are finding that this is a much better way of attacking the issue."</p> <p>Unlike Carnegie Mellon, the University of California has had to rework minority-exclusive programs since 1995, when the UC Regents passed a resolution stating that race and gender could no longer be considered for contracting programs. As a consequence, a program like the University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, once designed for 18 to 20 minorities and women each year, has changed its selection process.</p> <p>"We had to go back to square one and ask ourselves what the value of diversity was for the UC system. We determined two aspects — to provide equal opportunity and to eliminate discrimination, and to have diversity in our research and curricular programs, and to have this research address the needs of our increasingly diverse state and nation," said Sheila O'Rourke, program executive director. "We rewrote the criteria to reflect these goals. We no longer look at a candidate based on the box they check. We look at whether they have a record of teaching and service that will contribute to teaching at the University of California."</p> <hd id="AN0022970256-7">Still Concerned</hd> <p>Although the upside to changes within UC's exclusive program is that all faculty members are now responsible for diversity, O'Rourke is still concerned about the low number of minority students attending graduate school: "There needs to be work on all fronts. In terms of the undergraduate level, we have lost minority students. In terms of faculty hiring, when we went to raceneutral, we were down for four to five years after 1995, and, between 2000-04, we recovered somewhat."</p> <p>Without regard for the low number of minorities in undergraduate and graduate-level education, CEO has been contacting hundreds of universities and colleges, requesting they change their raceexclusive programs to adhere to what CEO calls "nondiscrimination" policies.</p> <hd id="AN0022970256-8">Disgruntled Parents</hd> <p>According to CEO President Roger Clegg, "We started looking at this issue a few years ago, and some programs we found on our own, and others were brought to our attention by parents whose children were excluded by these programs. We have contacted close to 200 schools since then, and we tell them that we understand that their program is run on a racially exclusive basis, and that this violates the law, and that we think it ought to be opened to all students regardless of race and ethnicity."</p> <p>"The reason we have been so successful and that schools are changing these programs is not only because the law requires it, but because it makes sense," he added. "These programs were designed to help disadvantaged students or help campus diversity. But disadvantaged students come in all shapes and colors. It's not just African-American students that can add to campus diversity. You may have students who are disabled or belong to a religious minority or who are the first to go to college. There are many ways a student can add to campus diversity."</p> <p>In Clegg's view, it's important that campuses give individualized attention to students and not just assume that, if a student is Latino, that's all they need to know. In addition, he notes, scholarships that might have only been for AfricanAmericans might now have opened up for Latinos and vice-versa. "What many institutions are now doing is in opening up their programs. They are expanding them. There's now more focus on economic disadvantage, and while it may be harder to get an upper- and middle-class Latino into a program, it may be easier for a lower-class Latino to get into a program."</p> <hd id="AN0022970256-9">No Substitute</hd> <p>Attending to the needs of students from lower-socioeconomic backgrounds — and creating programs specifically for them — is something that both Clegg and Shaw (of NAACP) consider important. However, as Shaw pointed out, "The fact that we should have more programs aimed at poor people is not a substitute for ameliorating social discrimination."</p> <p>Shaw's concern is that some programs have been eliminated by the mere act of opening them up to all groups. He's seen it happen, especially in programs funded by businesses that are aimed at increasing the pool of minority graduates for the workplace, and whose purpose is lost when programs are opened to all students.</p> <p>"I hope that corporate America and higher education don't just pull the tent and reverse the progress we have been making," said Shaw. "We know though that some institutions have simply folded their tents because they've gotten intimidated. We've gotten calls from all kinds of organizations beingthreatened with litigation who feel they can no longer assist minorities."</p> <p>Looking at the sweeping changes occurring within race-exclusive programs throughout the country, Antonio Flores, president of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, also expressed concern.</p> <p>"There is a great deal of confusion as to what the interpretations of the Michigan court decisions may mean. My sense is that this is not a good thing, that people are not clear about what is permissible and how to continue to strive for representation of underrepresented groups," said Flores. "All of this is a result of a polarization that is occurring in this country. This is just one more thing. These programs are being treated with the same sweeping, unfounded fear that is showing up in the immigration debate and in lectures and books by academics against the growing influence of Latinos in this country."</p> <p>Flores spoke to us on his way back from a meeting with corporate representatives who were eager to hire Latinos but couldn't because, as he put it, "the pipeline is dry."</p> <p>"They are having to go to other countries to bring in engineers and other employees. Yet, the president is cutting programs [that support underrepresented populations in education], and politicians are saying they want underrepresented groups to do better, but they don't invest in them," he said. "Our staff goes out into the field and comes back with feedback from students who perceive this as a threat to their futures. Many students are beginning to feel like the few gains made in the 1960s to the 1990s are being eroded in a serious way."</p> <hd id="AN0022970256-10">Fearing the Fear</hd> <p>Although Flores and Shaw are both concerned with the nation's climate of fear and falling back in our civil rights gains, others see changes in race-exclusive programs as an opportunity to look more deeply at diversity and find alternative ways to truly make diversity something to capitalize on and celebrate.</p> <p>In the meantime, our country will need to keep any eye on the numbers, at the growth (or lack thereof) of minority representation in higher education. And only time will tell whether our universities and colleges can find a new way to ensure diverse representation despite changes in the avenues or means of getting there.</p> <aug> <p>By Michelle Adam</p> <p></p> <p>Michelle Adam is a Contributing Editor for The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education. Condensed from The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, 16 (August 14,2006), 34-36. Published at 210 Route 4 East, Suite 310, Paramus, NJ 07652.</p> </aug> |
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