University of Rhode Island faces civil rights complaint for 'pervasive' discrimination from scholarships

A legal nonprofit dedicated to combatting racism has brought forward a federal civil rights complaint against the University of Rhode Island.

On Wednesday, the Equal Protection Project formally filed the complaint at the Office for Civil Rights’ Boston office against the school for over 51 scholarships that allegedly discriminate on the basis of race and sex.

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”The discrimination is so pervasive and systematic that urgent action by OCR is needed before the scholarships come up for reapplication in the spring 2025 semester,” the complaint reads. 

The various scholarships listed in the complaint violate Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments, according to the Equal Protection Project.

”Because URI is a public university, these discriminatory scholarships also violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” the complaint states.

”With respect to those scholarships limited to or preferring ‘minorities’ any reasonable student viewing that criteria would understand it to exclude white students, and such students would be dissuaded from even applying or attempting to participate,” the group adds.

”While the use of racial, skin color, and sex-based barriers described above are explicit, such descriptions also are ‘signaling’ racial- and sex-based preferences,” the document continues. ”Regardless of URI’s reasons for offering, promoting, and administering such discriminatory scholarships, URI is violating Title VI and Title IX by doing so. It does not matter if the recipient of federal funding discriminates in order to advance a benign ‘intention’ or ‘motivation.’”

The nonprofit concludes its complaint by requesting that the Department of Education move quickly to open an investigation into the scholarships in question, as well as ”impose such remedial relief as the law permits for the benefit of those who have been illegally excluded from URI’s various scholarships based on discriminatory criteria.” 

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According to its website, the Equal Protection Project is “devoted to the fair treatment of all persons without regard to race or ethnicity.”

”Our guiding principle is that there is no ‘good’ form of racism,” the group writes. “The remedy for racism never is more racism.”