UT Texas student group demands school bring back scholarship for illegals scrapped amid legality concerns

A student group at the University of Texas at Austin is demanding that the school bring back a program that provided services to illegal immigrant students. 

Rooted Collective, which, according to its website, is “[a]n initiative that provides support, resources, research, and advocacy for immigrant students at UT Austin,” created a petition on Jan. 29 together with the student group University Leadership Initiative to reestablish the Monarch program, which was ended by the university this January.  

According to the petition, the Monarch program, which began in 2016, “provided specific, but not exclusive, support for undocumented students, students with temporary status, students from mixed-status families, and U.S. citizen allies. Services included advising, mentoring, and workshops for academic, career, financial, and mental health support.”

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The university also ended a scholarship that functioned under the Monarch program and gave out up to $1,000 each year, as written in The Dallas Morning News. 

School officials have expressed worries in internal correspondence, saying that the Monarch scholarship could possibly go against Texas legislation from 2023 that stops diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives on public campuses, and also mentioned the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), said The Dallas Morning News. 

Texas legislation SB 17, signed into law on June 17, 2023, stops public colleges and universities from “establish[ing] or maintain[ing] a diversity, equity, and inclusion office,” “giv[ing] preference on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin to an applicant for employment, an employee, or a participant in any function of the institution,” or “requir[ing] as a condition of enrolling at the institution or performing any institution function any person to participate in diversity, equity, and inclusion training,” among other measures.

IIRIRA states that “an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible . . . for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit . . . without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”

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Rooted Collective pushed back against the university’s concerns that the Monarch program and scholarship potentially violated state and federal law. 

The student stated in the petition: “Section C of the UT system guidance for SB 17 clearly states that ‘programs that enhance student achievements without regard to sex, race, color, or ethnicity’ are exempted. The Monarch program did not implement any race or gender-based programming. Immigrants are not a single racial or ethnic group.”

Referencing the university’s apparent concerns about violating IIRIRA, the petition said: “The university has had ample time since the creation of this [Monarch] scholarship in 2022 to provide the Monarch program with the opportunity to remove the scholarship or change the qualifications for application to the scholarship. We believe it is unreasonable and unjust to close an entire program based on one scholarship offering.”

The student petition also demanded that the university “[p]rovide a clear statement as to the rationale for closing the Monarch program including a) why the Monarch program was not given time to address concerns and b) how the Monarch program is implicated by SB 17.”

Rooted Collective also called for donations to “make up the $10,000 of funding lost by the closure of the program” on its website. 

Campus Reform reached out to the University of Texas at Austin and Rooted Collective for comment. The article will be updated accordingly. 

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