This family basically wants to ensure that the funds always go to a black student. But don’t call it racism.
WHQR News reports:
UNCW Upperman family pulling future scholarship funds over UNC System’s equality policyFor the first time in 30 years, the Upperman family isn’t awarding any new scholarships at UNCW. Linda Upperman Smith said the way the university wanted to rewrite the language around the application wouldn’t have been in line with her father’s wishes.Born and raised in Wilmington, Linda Upperman Smith is the daughter of Dr. Leroy Upperman (1913-1996), a prominent physician in the area.“My father did an internship at Lincoln Hospital in Durham. There were very few internships and residencies available for African American physicians,” she told WHQR. “They were opening the new Community Hospital, moving it from North 7th Street to 10th Street, and so he took a job [there] and was trained by experienced physicians, both Black and White.”In the mid-1990s, the family’s financial contributions helped establish UNCW’s Upperman African American Cultural Center. And at any given time over the last few decades, they’ve supported three to four scholarships at a time for minority students, whom Upperman Smith has personally mentored. The family has built up an endowment, worth around $1 million at the end of last year; the endowment can award about 4% of its total value in scholarships, around $40,000, each year.But recently, the family was told they’d have to change their approach.“I was told that because of the change in the Board of Governors’ DEI guidelines, I could rewrite the award to take the African American part from the scholarship,” she said, adding that she and the family didn’t want to do that.“I discussed it with my adult sons, and we decided the climate may never change. There’s no way that we’re going to not follow my father’s wishes for the money to go to an African American student, so we’re not changing the wording,” she said.Technically, the scholarship required an interest in or commitment to issues related to African American students. Upperman scholars didn’t have to be a student of color, though they typically were.
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