The Southern Illinois University system has reached a tentative agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to alter fellowship programs that the department had challenged as discriminatory because they are reserved for women or members of minority groups.
Officials of the university system and the Justice Department refused on Wednesday to comment publicly on the details of the accord, which the federal agency proposed after two months of negotiations with system officials. But a source close to the discussions said that the proposal, to be the basis of a court settlement known as a consent decree, calls for the system to open up the programs to students of any race or gender. And, in a move that system officials described as unauthorized and premature, and that they subsequently reversed, the university’s Web site was temporarily changed this month to indicate that the programs were no longer restricted to women or members of minority groups.
The dispute stems from a complaint filed by an advocacy group, the Center for Equal Opportunity, and appears to be the first in which the Justice Department has been enlisted in a legal challenge against a race-exclusive college program (The Chronicle, November 25). Many other colleges around the nation have been opening minority programs up to other students in the face of pressure from conservative advocacy groups and the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, and in response to arguments that the Supreme Court’s reasoning in two 2003 rulings involving race-conscious college admissions made it harder for colleges to legally justify operating race-exclusive programs (see accompanying article).
In a November 4 letter to system officials, Bradley J. Schlozman, then the acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s civil-rights division, said that the agency planned to file a lawsuit against the system’s Board of Trustees and administration over three fellowship programs administered by the Carbondale campus.
The letter alleged that an agency investigation of the fellowship programs determined that the system had “engaged in a pattern or practice of intentional discrimination against whites, nonpreferred minorities, and males,” and that the eligibility criteria for the programs violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination. Officials of the university system persuaded the federal agency to postpone litigation while the two sides tried to negotiate a settlement.
Meanwhile, supporters of affirmative action have rallied behind the university system. Among those who issued statements of support for the minority fellowships were several civil-rights organizations and prominent Illinois politicians, including the two U.S. senators, Richard J. Durbin and Barack Obama, both Democrats. Last month, the Faculty Senate on the Carbondale campus adopted a statement urging administrators there to preserve the three fellowship programs: Bridge to the Doctorate, the Graduate Dean’s Fellowship, and Proactive Recruitment of Multicultural Professionals for Tomorrow, known as Prompt.
Jerry D. Blakemore, the university system’s general counsel, this week characterized the settlement proposed by the Justice Department as “a breakthrough.” On Wednesday, the system held meetings on the tentative agreement with the Carbondale campus’s student and faculty leaders, all of whom were asked to keep its terms in confidence.
In the coming weeks, system officials plan to discuss the proposal with student and faculty leaders on the system’s Edwardsville campus and with the black and Hispanic caucuses of the Illinois legislature.
Jon L. Pressley, president of the Carbondale campus’s Graduate and Professional Student Council, said he was part of the group of campus leaders who had heard administrators summarize the proposed consent degree. “I am not sure exactly how I feel,” he said. “I want to see more of what the actual plans are, so I am going to reserve judgment for now.”
Sometime this month, the university’s Web site was altered to delete the terms “minority” and “women” from the eligibility criteria for the Graduate Dean’s and Prompt fellowship programs. A notice on the site said: “The Prompt and Graduate Dean’s fellowship applications have been extensively revised and are now open to individuals whose personal or family background, life, cultural, and/or ethnic experiences could contribute to a more reflective, responsive environment in the program, the institution, and the larger academic community.”
The notice added that the application deadline for the two programs had been extended “to allow interested students to apply under the new guidelines.”
On Wednesday, following newspaper reports of the changes, the Web site was updated again to restore the old wording. David M. Gross, a spokesman for the university system, said that “some administrator in the organization made presumptions that were premature,” and that the earlier changes to the site had not been authorized by the system’s top officials.
It was unclear on Wednesday whether the proposed consent decree would cover the Bridge to the Doctorate program, which is administered by a consortium of colleges and research organizations and is financially supported by the National Science Foundation.
Background articles from The Chronicle:
