After Equal Protection Project Effort, Ithaca Schools Apologize For “Exclusionary Language” Barring White Students From Event
“EPP is vindicated, but most important, equal protection of the laws has triumphed for now at ICSD as a result of our efforts”
I have written previously about the effort of our Equal Protection Project to hold the Ithaca City School District (ICSD) accountable for racially segregated Students of Color United Summits it has held since 2021. Another such segregated event was planned for May 31, 2024, until EPP intervened with a May 28, 2024 Letter pointing out that it was unlawful for a public school district to hold racially segregated events, and calling upon ICSD to open the event to all students and faculty, and to alert the ICSD community to this change.
After receiving the letter, the ICSD Superintendent insisted that no students ever were excluded based on race. That’s contrary to the evidence we have accumulated, but we will get more evidence through our Freedom of Information Law request filed contemporaneously with the demand letter.
You can read the background, details, evidence, and reactions in these two posts:
- Ithaca (NY) Public Schools Must Desegregate “Students of Color” Summit, Demands Equal Protection Project
- Ithaca (NY) Schools Superintendent Says Students Of Color Summit “Open To Everyone” – Reacting To Equal Protection Project Demand
Despite the denial, on May 30, 2024, ICSD issued an apology shared with the entire school community (emphasis added):
From: ICSD Communications <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, May 30, 2024 at 09:12
Subject: SOCU Summit is tomorrow, Friday, May 31!
To: ICSD Communications <[email protected]>Greetings Students and Staff,
The Students of Color United (SOCU) Summit will be held this Friday, May 31, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Ithaca High School.
Please know that SOCU is open to all of our secondary students. We apologize for any previous communication that included exclusionary language about the event. Anyone who wishes to attend on Friday is welcome!
Let the front office at your school know if you want to attend by the end of the day today, Thursday, May 30, and transportation will be provided as necessary.
It appears the event took place and that at least some white students attended.
The story is beginning to reverberate. Fox News digital had an article about it today that stayed near the top of the home page most of day, and has accumulated thousands of comments.
[Fox News home page graphic]
The EPP called for Brown to “publicly denounce and renounce past and planned segregationist programs, and open up the upcoming SOCU Summit to all students and staff without regard to race.”
“ICSD needs not only to open the SOCU Summit to all students and staff, ICSD needs to inform all students and staff that the racial barrier has been removed,” the EPP wrote.
“If for whatever reason the SOCU Summit 2024 is not going to take place, ICSD still needs to inform students and staff that the announced racial barrier was improper,” the EPP letter continued. “Such barriers not only are contrary to law, they are contrary to ICSD policies, and part of remedying the damage from past and planned segregated events is to make clear that such practices are not ICSD policy.”
Less than 48 hours later, the ICSD emailed all students and staffers informing them that all students were welcomed after all and apologizing for initially using “exclusionary language” to promote the event.
“The Students of Color United (SOCU) Summit will be held this Friday, May 31, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Ithaca High School. Please know that SOCU is open to all of our secondary students. We apologize for any previous communication that included exclusionary language about the event,” the ICSD communications staff said in an email to students and staff that has been obtained by Fox News Digital….
Equal Protection Project founder William A. Jacobson feels his group succeeded with its call for change.
“In its mass email to the school community, the Ithaca City School District has admitted the validity of concerns raised by Equal Protection Project –EqualProtect.org — regarding exclusionary language used by ICSD to promote the Students of Color United Summit. EPP is vindicated, but most important, equal protection of the laws has triumphed for now at ICSD as a result of our efforts,” Jacobson told Fox News Digital.
“Equality is not a ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ value – it is a core foundation of our constitutional system. We hope that ICSD has learned a lesson and will promote equality throughout the district, and not fall into the trap of race-based ‘equity’ education,” Jacobson continued. “We also call on ICSD to be transparent as to past exclusionary practices, not just exclusionary language.”
Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor who also founded both the Legal Insurrection Foundation and CriticalRace.org, said EPP is devoted to ensuring fair treatment of all people without regard to race or ethnicity.
“Seventy years ago in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected racial segregation in public schools as unconstitutional. It is disheartening to see that ICSD has hosted and planned to host a Students of Color summit which was open only to students and faculty ‘of color’ and from which Whites are excluded. The time has come for ICSD to live up to both the law and the spirit of the Brown case, and to stop racial segregation in school programming once and for all time,” Jacobson said.
The Ithaca City School District, located in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, has over 5,000 students, according to its website.
The controversy also has been covered by USA Today (via Ithaca Journal) and the Ithaca Times.
ICSD has informed us that its initial response to our FOIL request will be provided on or before July 3, 2024. Hopefully ICSD will not play the FOIL games it played back in 2015-2016 when it wasted $20k of taxpayer money for a law firm to fight our request for video of an anti-Israel activist brought into a 3rd grade classroom. We won that litigation, but it took the better part of a year. The video was bad, really bad, VIDEO: Activists manipulate third-graders into hating Israel.
We will keep after this.
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Comments
I was born after the Civil Rights Act was passed. I’ve never experienced a segregated society and have always presumed I never would…..until I reached my 50s. The ironically named ‘Progressives’ are taking us backwards at quite a pace.
There was a time when desegregation was profitable in a multitude of ways for minorities, now that they have milked that for all it was worth we have come full circle. Resegragation is now seen as a new way to profits.
Translation: “we got caught.”
Go EPP!!! Make them admit that racism is a two way street.
Translation: “We got caught.”
But I bet dollars to doughnuts they didn’t learn their lesson. And will be pulling the same shenanigans next year. If not sooner..
if they had “accidentally” excluded blacks they’d be paying $$$$$ to blmplo
“civil rights”were already on the books
it was named that way so any who were against the welfare state would come off as racists
Man, you’re really racking up the wins, Professor! Nice job!!
Call me cynical, but while this is nice, it basically boils down to ‘well we got caught being racist, so we’ll stop being racist for now’.
If the only punishment is having to stop, then they’re going to keep doing it.
Yep. IMO, the answer is financial accountability for the individuals making these decisions and the institutions which hire and allowed them to be implemented. When a basic constitutional violation occurs such as this then those impacted, every person excluded due to ‘race’ should be presumed to have standing to sue. Require the institutions to carry liability insurance as well as the employees. So if a LEO or a teacher/administrator gets hammered in one jurisdiction the next jurisdiction will have to evaluate whether hiring this person is worth the risk. Same for the institution decision on retaining such a risky employee and yes the prior hammering would be admissible at subsequent trials. Golly, Superintendent didn’t you lose a multi million dollar lawsuit three years ago? Why wasn’t that enough to deter you from becoming a repeat offender? Hey school board why did y’all hire or retain this risky employee with a documented history of constitutional violations? Then let a Jury decide what to do.
Some people might think that these victories are just a drop in the bucket. I always think about that nail in the poem… for want of a nail the shoe was lost.. etc..This group is the nail…TY Equalprotect.org
Time to cancel ICSD for toxic anti-white rhetoric. BLM/CRT is such a fraud. There will be no reparations.
“And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, then let him fall….”
Frederick Douglass (1865)
www,blackpast,org