UVA changes parameters for race-restrictive program after facing challenge from conservative group
The Equal Protection Project claimed that the program violated both Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause.
Shortly after the EPP’s complaint, the school opened up the admission requirements of the program, seemingly making it no longer restrictive on the basis of race.
The University of Virginia (UVA) opened up admission to a previously race-restricted program after a conservative legal group filed a civil rights complaint with the Department of Education against the school.
UVA offers a “BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] Alumni-Student Mentoring Program” that was previously billed as providing “up to 25 BIPOC undergraduates in [the School of Education and Human Development] each fall with individual guidance and support from alumni educators” in order to “improve BIPOC undergraduates’ program experiences, career opportunities, and retention.”
Following a civil rights complaint from the Equal Protection Project (EPP), a part of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, UVA changed the program parameters, EPP claimed. The new description says the program is meant for “up to 25 undergraduates” and was “created with BIPOC students in mind.”
The EPP’s complaint, filed on Oct. 1, stated that UVA’s BIPOC Mentoring Program required applicants to state their “race and/or ethnicity” and “[made] clear that a student’s eligibility to participate in the program turns on his or her race and ethnicity.”
The EPP claimed that the program violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because “it conditions eligibility for participation on a student’s race, ethnicity and skin color.” The complaint also states that, since UVA is a taxpayer-funded public university, the school’s offering of the program “also violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
“If applicants are not BIPOC, they are automatically ineligible for the mentorship program,” the complaint says.
The EPP is specifically asking the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to begin an investigation into UVA’s creation and running of the program and to make UVA grant “remedial relief” for applicants who “have been illegally excluded.”
The program is overseen by the School of Education and Human Development’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
The School of Education and Human Development also offers a Critical Whiteness Study Group, which focuses on “structured, ongoing conversations about dismantling white supremacy culture, which continues to stand in the way of equity.”
Campus Reform has reached out to the University of Virginia’s Officer for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the Legal Insurrection Foundation for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
