University officials say the scholarship “attempts to diversify” the student body “ethnically.”
By Ryan O’Quinn/Special to The Malibu Times
Pepperdine University has recently come under fire from two activist groups alleging the university is in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The allegations stem from the Richard Eamer Scholars Program that awards approximately $1,000 per year to minority students and is not available to all ethnicities. The university says it will not alter the policy unless required to by law.
The American Civil Rights Institute and the Center for Equal Opportunity sent about 100 letters to various universities around the country and to the U.S. Department of Education outlining their complaints. Many of the schools, including Stanford and California Institute of Technology, dismantled or amended the Eamer program, but Pepperdine is the only California school defending the scholarship, despite facing a formal complaint. A spokesman for the university maintains the scholarship is the right thing to do.
“The Richard Eamer Scholarship is one of our attempts to diversify our student body ethnically,” said David Baird, dean of Seaver College, Pepperdine’s undergraduate school. “Although modest in amount, the scholarship program plays an important role in fostering both a sense of pride and community among the recipients.”
The amount of funding the recipients receive from the program is relatively small, and is a fraction of the $30 million undergraduates receive annually in financial assistance. The American Civil Rights Institute says that if the funding, regardless of amount, were available only to whites, it would be illegal.
“The way we read the Civil Rights Act is anytime any exclusive program is based on race or ethnicity it violates the Civil Rights Act,” said Diane Schachterle, director of public affairs for the American Civil Rights Institute.
Pepperdine asserts that, although meager in dollar amount, the scholarship is significant in value.
“[The Eamer Scholarship] is awarded on the basis of need,” Baird said. “It represents no more than .2 percent of the school’s financial aid budget.”
There are currently 58 Pepperdine students receiving the grant, which amounted to $47,219 this year. According to the school’s Web site, the program offers “scholarships to students of color with financial need who demonstrate academic excellence, leadership, mentoring and service. Scholarship recipients attend special receptions, retreats, excursions and guidance counseling sessions each academic year.”
” ‘Students of color’ is very specifically discriminatory because it is very clearly based on race or ethnicity,” Schachterle said. “If you cannot write it or read it precisely the opposite way and have it be fair, then it isn’t going to be fair.”
The letter to the Department of Education cited retreats, counseling sessions and special receptions as being in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Title VI specifically deals with activities and organizations that receive federal funding.
If the university is found to be in breach of the law, the federal agency providing assistance is to terminate the fund or refer the matter to the Department of Justice. In recent years, similar anti-affirmative action groups have lodged formal complaints specifically at universities, requiring the schools to alter various programs that were deemed racially exclusive. Schachterle added there are two different levels to the problem with the Eamer program at Pepperdine. Because it is a California school, Proposition 209 also applies. The law, which passed in 1996, states that anyone receiving state funds shall not discriminate against or grant preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity, sex or national origin. If Pepperdine were receiving state funds, then it would be violating that law. Schachterle did not comment on the next step in Pepperdine’s case, but said, in the past, they have had to involve the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to investigate cases of discrimination.
In 2002, 58.3 percent of Pepperdine’s student body was Caucasian, with the remainder identifying themselves as international, Native American, African American, Asian, Latino or undeclared.
Pepperdine lists a number of diversity programs in the student affairs section of their information packet. Among the programs is a multicultural theater project, an annual student leader’s summit on diversity, the Week of Hope starting on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a cultural faire, a cultural heritage series and a special lecture series that boasts notable speakers including Linda Chavez, who heads the Center for Equal Opportunity, ironically one of the groups charging the university with discrimination. Baird maintains that these groups are missing the point and seeks to be a solution to the problem by bringing minorities to Pepperdine. “We seek to recruit and retain qualified members of underrepresented groups,” Baird said, “not because it is politically correct, but because, given our Christian mission, it is the right thing to do.”