The Civil Rights Complaint filed on October 1, 2024, by the Equal Protection Project (EqualProtect.org) against the University of Virginia set off substantial media coverage last week, including local network affiliates in Charlottesville, U. Virginia BIPOC Alumni-Student Mentoring Program Challenged By Equal Protection Project:
The Equal Protection Project (EPP) (EqualProtect.org) of the Legal Insurrection Foundation has challenged numerous racially discriminatory programs done in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This discrimination comes in various ways, but the overarching theme is to exclude or diminish some people and promote others, based on race, color, ethnicity, or sex. In all we have filed over 40 complaints and legal actions since launch in February 2023, with over half the schools withdrawing or modifying the discriminatory programs after our filing. (See EPP September 2024 Impact Report.)Almost all of our actions have addressed discrimination in higher education. In our latest action, we have filed a Civil Rights Complaint (full embed at bottom of post) with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education, against the the University of Virginia (“UVA”), a public university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, for creating, sponsoring and promoting a racially discriminatory program called the BIPOC Alumni-Student Mentoring Program (“BIPOC Mentoring Program”).
Soon after our filing and the media coverage, UVA changed the wording for the program. UVA has eliminated the original wording that the program was open only to “up to 25 BIPOC undergraduates … to improve BIPOC undergraduates’ program experiences…” and substituted the wording [archive] “up to 25 undergraduates … created with BIPOC students in mind” and also added that it was open to all “races, ethnicities, and national origins.”
Original:
Modified After EPP Complaint:
Now the media coverage is expanding.
Fox News wrote about the complaint and wording change in a post what was on the home page for most of the day on October 9, generating over 2000 comments and syndicated through Yahoo News, AOL News, MSN, and others:
The school’s website said the BIPOC Alumni-Student Mentoring Program was seeking “up to 25 BIPOC undergraduates” as recently as October 2, according to the Internet Archives Wayback Machine.
It has since been edited to declare the program is seeking “up to 25 undergraduates” and notes the “program was created with BIPOC students in mind.”Cornell Law professor William A. Jacobson founded the EPP to ensure fair treatment of all people without regard to race or ethnicity and feels the change is both an “admission of wrongdoing” and simply not enough.”The wording change by UVA so soon after our complaint is a tacit admission of wrongdoing,” Jacobson told Fox News Digital.”These wording changes, however, do not fully solve the problem because UVA still signals that the program was ‘created with BIPOC students in mind.’ That is a dog whistle that only BIPOC students are encouraged to apply and that non-BIPOC — i.e. White — students are not welcome,” Jacobson continued. “UVA needs to make the program fully open and welcoming to all students without regard to race rather than playing word games.”The EPP’s guiding principle is that there is “no ‘good’ form of racism,” and that the “remedy for racism never is more racism,” according to its website.A University of Virginia spokesperson said the school hadn’t yet received the complaint and couldn’t specifically comment, but pointed Fox News Digital to the school’s position on discrimination.
Numerous other outlets followed suit including The UK Daily Mail:
A nonprofit has filed a civil rights complaint against the University of Virginia (UVA), arguing that its supposedly BIPOC-only mentoring program is racist toward white students….
According to the EPP complaint, the program violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment of Constitution, both of which prohibit discrimination based on race.
It has emerged that UVA has softened the language on its website about the program to make it appear more inclusive to white people, though it’s unclear if the university did so in reaction to the civil rights filing.
Numerous other outlets have covered the story and wording change, including Just The News, and the University Herald.
OCR guidance provides: “In determining whether an opportunity to participate is open to all students, OCR may consider, for example, whether advertisements or other communications would lead a reasonable student, or a parent or guardian, to understand that all students are welcome to participate.” Here, UVA needs to change the name of the mentor program and take out the langauge about it being “created with BIPOC students in mind.”
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