Surveying the battleground in the fight for access - equal opportunity in education cases

Black Issues in Higher Education, May 15, 1997 by Cheryl D. Fields

on the Board of Regents to admit more whites

to the three state HBCUs and offer

preferential admissions to students based on

socio-economics, not race. The suit also calls

for more Black enrollment at predominantly white

schools via a "uniform, systemwide admissions

policy."

Louisiana

Louisiana is at the end of the second year of

a ten-year consent decree imposed by the U.S.

District Court that essentially kept Louisiana's

higher education system intact while ordering it

to desegregate. The consent decree, which

follows twenty years of litigation, calls for $122

million to be spent on integration efforts over

the course of the ten years -- $65 million in

capital funds, $48 million for program

implementation, and $9 million for scholarships

to attract Black students to traditionally white

schools and white students to historically Black

schools.

In addition, the consent decree calls for the

opening of an integrated Baton Rouge

Community College, which has as its mandate to

prepare students who otherwise would not

necessarily go to college to matriculate into a

four-year college or university.

Maryland

Since the Podberesky v. Kirwan decision,

which was decided by the Fourth Circuit U.S.

Court of Appeals in 1994, scholarships only for

Black students are no longer permitted in

Maryland. That case, brought by a student of

Hispanic descent, involved publicly funded

scholarships for African American students

administered by the University of Maryland.

Other states, most recently Florida, have

followed suit by opening minority-based

scholarships to all students.

Mississippi

Mississippi has the dubious distinction of

being caught in the middle of two Fifth Circuit

Court of Appeals decisions in Hopwood (see

Texas) and Fordice. In Fordice, the Fifth

Circuit has ruled that some vestiges of the old

system of segregation still exist in higher

education and has ordered some changes and

further study. (For extensive coverage of the

Fordice decision, see stories beginning on page

10.)

Ohio

Ohio's Central State University is fighting

for its very survival under the pressure of years

of disproportionate funding from the state and

fiscal irresponsibility on behalf of the university

administrators. Recently, state officials have

announced that they will work to preserve the

institution, possibly merging the HBCU with its

former parent institution, Wilberforce

University. That proposal prompted the Office

for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department

of Education (ED) to reopen

its investigation into whether Ohio is engaging

in discriminatory practices.

Texas

In Texas, public colleges and universities

have been instructed by State Attorney General

Dan Morales to adopt race-neutral policies with

respect to admissions, financial aid, hiring, and

promotions policies. The attorney general based

his actions upon the 1996 Fifth U.S. Circuit

Court of Appeals (which presides over

Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi) ruling in

Hopwood v. The State of Texas, which decided

that the University of Texas Law School at

Austin should not use race as a factor in making