Photo // Rafael Tortolero
“THE REMEDY FOR RACISM IS NEVER MORE RACISM.” The conservative nonprofit Equal Protection Project filed a claim calling for the Dept. of Education to investigate IU South Bend for racial discrimination in scholarships targeted to minority students.
By: Mira Costello, Claire McKenna
Editor-in-Chief, Staff-Writer
The Equal Protection Project filed a complaint against IU South Bend on March 26 alleging that some of the university’s minority-targeted scholarships are discriminatory. They have filed more than 70 complaints nationwide against over 200 different scholarships and student organizations.
The five scholarships that the group deems discriminatory are the Clark Equipment Minority, Helen F. Pope Memorial, IU South Bend Black Council, Kem Krest “Crossing the Finish Line” Bicentennial and NAACP scholarships.
The NAACP scholarship specifies that it is intended for Black students, while the other four are open to all but prioritized for minority students, mainly Black or Hispanic applicants. These scholarships are the first five seen on IU South Bend’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Scholarships webpage.
“As part of its mission, Indiana University is committed to diversity, special consideration will be given to underrepresented populations, including but not limited to financially challenged students, and/or students with diverse cultural experiences,” reads the brief on the website, justifying each scholarship.
These five are not the only scholarships for minorities at the school; there are also scholarships that prioritize LGBTQ+ students, low-income students, 21st Century scholars and more.
The Equal Protection Project (EPP) is a subsidiary effort by the Legal Insurrection Fund, a conservative advocacy nonprofit. Its name references the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which requires individuals to be treated equally under the law and has been the basis of many landmark cases, including Brown v. Board of Education. The clause continues to raise civil rights questions as courts interpret how it should apply to various situations.
The EPP said in its complaint that the scholarships in question violate the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment by discriminating against applicants based on race. It called for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to investigate the scholarships and “to discern whether IUSB is engaging in such discrimination in its other activities.”
On their website, the EPP’s stated mission includes fighting “the equity agenda”, explaining that “bureaucratic apparatchiks in schools and universities employ reverse racism in the name of furthering ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’”
Cornell Law School Professor William Jacobson – founder of the Legal Insurrection Foundation and president of the EPP – said such an agenda is unlawful.
“The equity agenda is the attempt to use group identity to justify unlawful racial discrimination and to substitute group outcomes for individual opportunity and treatment in order to achieve a desired racial and ethnic mix,” Jacobson wrote in a statement to The Preface.
In the EPP’s assessment, minority-targeted scholarships and programs are a counterproductive attempt at “fighting discrimination with more discrimination,” Jacobson said.
When asked about whether eliminating minority-targeted programs might cause certain populations to be excluded – for example, first-generation students (often minorities) unfamiliar with the scholarship process – Jacobson said the EPP encourages supporting those students individually, but that extra help shouldn’t interfere with “objective meritocracy.”
“Schools cannot, however, assume that students of a certain race, color, or national origin need the extra help, while other students do not,” Jacobson wrote to The Preface. “Base the extra help on individual need, not negative racial stereotypes that some racial and ethnic groups are inherently less capable.”
There are some situations in which courts have found racial differentiation is acceptable, but when a protected class is involved, courts must use strict scrutiny – the highest standard of judicial review, which requires proof that a certain rule is vitally important (“compelling interest”) and is designed very precisely to avoid unnecessary restrictions (“narrowly tailored”). Jacobson said the EPP does not believe IU South Bend’s scholarships meet these standards.
Jacobson claimed that for about half of the complaints the EPP has filed, schools have changed their policies without intervention from the Department of Education. He hopes that IU South Bend will remove racial criteria from the scholarships.
“There also needs to be accountability, which might mean monetary or administrative penalties assessed by the Department of Education,” he said.
Jacobson said the EPP hopes to expand its efforts beyond race-based cases to focus on sex-based and religious discrimination.
According to IU, last semester, over 71% of IU South Bend students received financial aid and scholarships. Currently, about 37% of IU South Bend students belong to a racial minority group.
We reached out to IU South Bend’s Director of Communications and Marketing, Jim Pinkerton, for comment on the matter. He referred us to Mark Bode, IU’s executive director of media relations and public affairs in Bloomington. Neither Bode nor his Deputy Director Teresa Mackin responded to requests for comment by the time of publication.
We also sought to interview two student retention specialists in the Titan Success Center. One declined to comment, while the other referred us to Pinkerton.
At the time of publication, IU South Bend has not released a public statement regarding the complaint or the scholarships.
