Complaint Alleges University of San Diego Operates, Administers and Promotes 6 Discriminatory Scholarship Programs

It looks like universities all over California are casually discriminating against whites with programs for preferred minorities in violation of California and federal law.

Talk about systemic racism!

But after going unnoticed, possibly for years, these kinds of programs are now facing federal charges of discrimination from a spunky organization devoted to the color blind vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.,  that has fallen out of favor in our era of progressive diversity fetishists.

Last month, the Equal Protection Project, a civil rights organization, filed a complaint with the United States Education Department against Loyola Marymount University for multiple scholarship programs that tailored participation to blacks and other minorities or, in one case, just Latino women.

And earlier this year, the Equal Protection Project filed a complaint, also with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights,  for discriminatory scholarship programs at the University of San Diego that sound just like the ones at Loyola Marymount University.  Some of the scholarships just state a discriminatory preference while others are completely exclusionary, limiting participation to members of a particular racial or ethnic group.

Equal Protection Project Founder William Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell,  told the California Globe that he believes the DEI efforts at the University of San Diego are responsible for the programs.

“The scholarships at issue do not appear to be limited to one office or department, but USD has a very active DEI effort, and the discriminatory scholarships need to be understood in that context, “ he explained. “Given the strong DEI effort at USD, it is not surprising that the discrimination was so open. Many schools don’t understand, or don’t care, that there are lawful ways to achieve diversity, but discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is not a lawful means of achieving diversity.”

The complaint says that, “USD operates, administers and promotes six (6) discriminatory scholarship programs. These scholarship programs set up unequal standards of eligibility so that students similarly situated are treated differently based on race and ethnicity, in clear violation of Title VI,” of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination based on race or national origin in federally funded schools.

The scholarship programs at issue are a case study in a racial spoils system.  They are offered to “students and applicants” for admission” and they violate Title VI by” illegally excluding students based on their race, color, and/or national origin,” the filing says.

There is the “FUSO Alumni Scholarship” that chirpily says it is open to everybody but preferences are for Filipinos. “Open to all undergraduate and graduate students who have worked to better the experience of USD’s Filipino community. Preference to a Filipino student.”

The Gwendolyn Brook Endowed Scholarship for the Study of the Humanities” does not even claim to be pluralistic. It is open only to a “Student of Color.”

The University of San Diego also has the Comité México Scholarship requires students to “Have Mexican or Mexican-American heritage.”

The Black Alumni Network Scholarship also simultaneously says it is open to everyone while seeming to reserve the fund for someone black. “Open to all undergraduate and graduate students who have worked to better the experience of USD’s African American community. Preference to an African – American student.”

The Latino Alumni Network  Society uses the same kind of language. “Open to undergraduate and graduate students who have worked to better the experience of USD’s Latino/a community. Preference to a Latino/a student.”

And the Augusto Boat Scholarship says  it has a “Preference for (but not limited to) students of color.”

But if whites are still technically allowed to apply for some of these scholarships do they still qualify as discriminatory?

Jacobson explains that the stated preferences make the scholarships illegal, even if they are supposedly open to everyone.  “Giving a preference to a particular race is still unlawful discrimination – you are treating one person better than another person based on race.”

Along the same lines,  Acting Assistant Education Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in an official guidance letter to universities this February that any differential treatment is illegal.  “If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law.”

The complaint makes clear that justifying the exclusive scholarship as a way to achieve diversity is not legally valid.  “Regardless of USD’s reasons for offering, promoting, and administering such discriminatory scholarships, USD is violating Title VI by doing so. It does not matter if the recipient of federal funding discriminates in order to advance a benign “intention” or “motivation.”

The result here is blanket discrimination. “Because USD’s racial and/or ethnicity-based requirements for these scholarships are presumptively invalid, the use of such criteria violates state and federal civil rights statutes.”

So now what?

Jacobson said he hopes that the Education Department forces the University of San Diego to end the discriminatory scholarships and compensate students who were shut out of them.  “Our primary objective in all our cases is to stop the discrimination, not to stop the scholarships. We want the students to get the money, but USD has a legal and moral obligation to make the scholarships available to all students without regard to race, color, or national origin. Accountability also is important. USD owes the community an apology, a plan to compensate excluded students, and a firm institutional commitment to making sure this doesn’t happen again. Beyond that, we think that OCR should seriously consider whether monetary relief is needed to ensure future compliance.”

University of San Diego president James Harris did not reply to a request for comment.

But Glenn Ricketts, spokesman for the National Association of Scholars, an academic freedom group, said the action by Jacobson’s group is an overdue and much needed development.

“I guess I’m surprised that someone is actually calling USD on these illegal practices since for the longest time they’ve gotten clean away with it,” he emailed. “But there’s definitely a shift in the wind since the Supreme Court’s ruling against Harvard two years ago in the Students for Fair Admissions case [banning racial preferences], although the present program at USD indicates that they haven’t gotten the news.  A big part of the problem as well is the fact that midlevel federal bureaucrats have so often been the aiders and abettors of travesties such as this, so they figure that there’s nothing to worry about. And until very recently, they’ve been right.”