A complaint filed to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on Monday claims a scholarship program at the University of Colorado Boulder is racially discriminatory.
The complaint, filed by the Equal Protection Project, said the McNair Scholars Program at CU Boulder excludes certain students based on race.
To qualify for the McNair Scholars Program at CU Boulder, a student must be low income, first generation or ethnically underrepresented. The McNair Scholars Program is a federally funded program by the Department of Education at 151 institutions to help chosen students obtain a doctoral degree.
The scholarship program defines underrepresented as Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, American Indian or Alaskan Native or Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders. The complaint said the scholarship is discriminatory because it excludes students of any other race not listed, including white and Asian people.
“The University of Colorado Boulder just became aware of the complaint filed by the Equal Protection Project against the university to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights,” a CU Boulder Spokesperson said. “Our campus strives to comply with all federal requirements related to the awarding of financial aid, is evaluating this complaint and will respond to any inquiry we might receive from OCR.”
The complaint said offering “scholarship opportunities to students based on their race and skin color violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
The complaint also references when the Supreme Court overruled affirmative action in June, ending race-conscious admissions practices in universities.
William Jacobson, president and founder of the EPP, said the Supreme Court case affirms the scholarship program’s unlawfulness when it ruled that student body diversity is not an interest that justifies racial discrimination.
“I’m assuming Boulder and other schools do this because they want a more diverse environment, whether you think that’s good or bad doesn’t matter, we don’t need to reach that judgment,” Jacobson said. “Assuming it’s a good thing, you still can’t discriminate on the basis of race in order to achieve that diversity. You need to find a different way.”
The EPP challenges the legality of programs in higher education — including scholarships, grants and tuition reductions — that have a goal of increasing racial diversity and exclude certain races. The EPP is part of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, an organization that has a conservative law and politics blog and a critical race theory website.
The McNair Scholars Program funds are used to provide the awarded students with research opportunities, faculty mentoring and seminars, summer research internships, graduate school visits, fee waivers for graduate school application fees and funding for travel to academic conferences.
The EPP also submitted a complaint about the same scholarship program at CU Denver. Jacobson said he hopes CU Boulder will take initiative to change the scholarship rules.
The complaint process within the Department of Education begins with the filing of a complaint, and CU Boulder will have a chance to respond. The Department of Education will then decide whether to open an investigation in the next several months.
