California campus changes scholarship rules after lawsuit

from Adam EchelmanCalMatters

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Scholarship for Black Students at UC San Diego is now available to anyone regardless of race, post-graduate students and right-leaning non-profit organization sued discrimination university this July.

The plaintiffs alleged that the scholarship fund violated a series of laws, including the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was enacted to protect black Americans in the South.

One of the students, Kai Peters, said he was denied access to the scholarship because he was not black. Peters sent a written statement to CalMatters through the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, the nonprofit plaintiff. He said his rejection was an example of “institutionalized racism,” a phrase coined in part to characterize how government institutions discriminate against black Americans.

“I don’t see the irony,” said Joshua Thompson, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented the plaintiffs. “The idea is that we don’t want government actors to enforce their discrimination.”

The Black Alumni Scholarship Fund for UC San Diego Students is now named Goins Alumni Scholarship Fundnamed after its founding donor Lennon Gones, according to the press exemption last week. The scholarship fund has awarded nearly $60 million to “more than 15,400 students” since its inception, the press release said.

The rebranded scholarship program is just one of several initiatives in California that have come under scrutiny over the past two years. Last summer, the Supreme Court overturned a precedent that allowed the state’s private universities to use affirmative action, and this year the Trump administration ended a slew of campus initiatives promoting diversity.

In March, UC changed its hiring practices, barring its 10 campuses from requiring “diversity statements” as a condition of employment. These statements are now voluntary.

Other changes are more subtle. In February, Bakersfield College described its “Chicano/Latino Pre-Commencement Event” as a means of “encouraging Chicano/Latino students to participate in celebrations (graduation).” But by the time graduation rolled around in May, the word “Chicano/Latino” already was removed from this sentence.

The website shows a change in focus

A press release for the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund did not address the reason for the change, and a university spokesman, Hiram Soto, declined to comment further.

But a CalMatters analysis of the fund’s website shows how the university has changed course.

in September, the website said the university’s scholarship fund was founded in 1983 by Gownes to “expand educational opportunities for high-achieving, civic-minded African-American students,” focusing on admitted black students with a record of “community service” and “resilience to racial and other identity challenges.”

There was no mistaking that this fund was by and for the black community. “100% of BASF Scholars identify as Black/African American,” the website says, adding that the goal of the scholarship fund is to “increase Black graduation at UCSD from 2% to 5% of degrees awarded.”

Despite decades of scholarship, this goal remains elusive. In the academic year 2023-24 just under 3% of UC San Diego bachelor’s degrees awarded to students who identify as black or African-American, according to system data.

Racial discrimination is illegal in the US, but in California the standard for what constitutes discrimination depends in part on whether an entity is public or private. While private organizations, including nonprofits and foundations, have long offered scholarships and programs for certain racial or ethnic groups — arguing that spending money is a form of free speech — state agencies, including UC campuses, have been barred from any form of affirmative action since California voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996.

To avoid legal scrutiny, UC San Diego moved the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund to the private San Diego Foundation in 1998, according to the September iteration of the fund’s website.

But in the lawsuit, Thompson and his legal team argued that the university remained involved in the scholarship operation. “Our allegations were that (UCS officials) conspired with a private entity to circumvent (Prop.) 209 and the Equal Protection Clause.” Specifically, he said the university provided the San Diego Foundation with information about which students identified as black on their college applications and that the foundation’s leadership included some university employees.

The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 prohibited government agencies from using private individuals to discriminate. Back then, government agencies and law enforcement, especially in the South, often used private groups — most famously the Ku Klux Klan — to terrorize black communities.

By working with the private foundation to support black students, UC San Diego is guilty of the same kind of “criminal behavior” as the government and law enforcement agencies of the Jim Crow South, Thompson said. “This is the full tradition of our civil rights laws,” he said, citing both the Ku Klux Klan Act and more recent laws such as Proposition 209. “We don’t want the government to discriminate against people based on race.”

Soon after the lawsuit was filed, Thompson said the scholarship fund contacted his legal team and agreed to change its name and open applications to students who do not identify as black.

He said there could be other changes on the horizon. In February, the Pacific Legal Foundation sued Benioff Children’s Hospital at UC San Francisco over another program aimed at minority high school students. Thompson said the San Francisco University System is now negotiating how to continue that program as well.

These negotiations are being conducted informally, so there is no written settlement agreement to show how the universities are responding and what changes are actually occurring.

Today, the scholarship fund’s website says its applications are open to UC San Diego students who are involved in community service and those with a demonstrated “ability to overcome great challenges,” as well as other race-neutral criteria.

The website includes no mention of black students.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.