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The university will stop awarding race-based scholarships. It says they are quickly becoming illegal.
By BARRY KLEIN
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 31, 2001
Despite significant declines this year in black freshman enrollment, the University of Florida has decided to stop awarding race-based scholarships.
The change will ensure that every student has "fair access" to UF scholarships, university officials said Thursday.
The UF Foundation administers at least 50 scholarship endowments intended to benefit members of specific minority groups. Officials said they will soon begin working with donors to make those scholarships race-neutral.
If they didn't make the change, officials said, the federal courts probably would. The U.S. Department of Education has been restricting the use of race in federally funded scholarships since 1995.
But the policy change comes at a curious time for UF, which is struggling mightily to attract black students this year -- the first in which it has been forced by Gov. Jeb Bush's One Florida plan to admit freshmen without the use of racial preferences.
The university announced Thursday that only 7.2 percent of its freshman class this year is African-American. That's down from about 12 percent in 2000, the final year in which UF could legally consider race as a factor in admissions.
"Scholarships are only one part of a comprehensive strategy the university is using to ensure our student body can remain diverse," said UF provost David Colburn.
But even Colburn, the university's chief academic officer, concedes the UF campus is "uncomfortably white and elitist."
"We recognize that there is still considerable work to be done in reaching our goal," said UF President Charles Young.
UF's decision to ban race-based scholarships was a surprise to Gov. Bush, who ended the use of racial preferences in university admissions when he issued his One Florida order in 1999.
But there is nothing in One Florida that requires universities to end race-based scholarships, said Lisa Gates, a Bush spokeswoman.
Other Florida universities do not seem ready to abandon the recruitment tool, a traditional element in fundraising.
The University of South Florida, for example, presented scholarships to 72 Hispanic students last month as part of its "Latino Scholarship Program." The students will receive a total of $128,000 in assistance.
"There has been no discussion of changes here," said USF spokesman Michael Reich.
Florida State University also offers race-based scholarships. Spokeswoman Browning Brooks said FSU lawyers are monitoring court decisions involving universities and race, but have made no recommendations.
The policy change at UF was disclosed earlier this week at a meeting of university deans. UF Foundation vice president Leslie Bram told them the legal trend is clear.
"The law has become pretty clear on this," she said. "Race-based scholarships are rapidly becoming illegal."
While lawsuits are pending against several universities, the only important decision involving such scholarships was handed down in 1995. That's when a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared unconstitutional a University of Maryland scholarship program for African-Americans.
The judges said the university could not prove that the program, which annually awarded scholarships to between 30 and 40 African-Americans, was an effective remedy for past discrimination.
On Monday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court in Atlanta ruled that an affirmative action admissions policy at the University of Georgia was unconstitutional. That case dealt with admissions, not scholarships, but it may indicate which way the court would rule if the question of race-based scholarships comes up, said UF associate general counsel Stephen Prevaux.
Bram said UF will work with the scholarship donors to either alter their funds' requirements or find another use for the money on campus.
Bram said she expects the process to take about a year.
Colburn said he didn't know how many students would be affected by the decision, but noted that many of the UF scholarships are for just one student.
He said any student with an existing scholarship will be allowed to keep it.
-- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.