A Rhode Island-based law group has filed a complaint against Western Michigan University through the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The complaint, filed by the conservative nonprofit legal group the Equal Protection project on July 9, alleges WMU uses discriminatory criteria to determine awards for eight different scholarships.
The complaint claims five scholarships violate Title VI of the Civil Rights act of 1964 and discriminate on the basis of race, national origin or color because they prioritize or are restricted to certain minority groups. The EPP also alleges three scholarships that are restricted to women violate Title IX because they discriminate on the basis of sex.
The EPP is a branch of the Legal Insurrection Fund, a conservative legal foundation that also includes a conservative law and policy blog and a website tracking usage of critical race theory in education. According to the LIF website, the EPP “opposes discrimination done in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”
EPP founder William Jacobson said the goal of the complaint is to make the scholarships available to all prospective students.
“We hope that the scholarships continue. We hope the students still get the money, but everybody has to have an equal shot at it. You cannot restrict it based on race, color, national origin, or sex,” Jacobson said.
The OCR must evaluate all complaints before deciding whether to investigate them - Jacobson said this process could take months, and the next step is seeing whether or not the office will act on the complaint.
“We have no involvement. This is not like a private lawsuit where we take depositions and people serve interrogatories and there's motion practice,” Jacobson said. “The Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education will investigate and run this complaint. Almost all of them get resolved one way or another - how they get resolved is really not something we have any say in.”
If an investigation is opened, the first step is notifying the university. A spokesperson for WMU said the school has not yet been notified, but will work and cooperate with the federal agency once the complaint is received.
According to WMU’s webpage, scholarships can be awarded for academic success, financial need or promoting multicultural awareness, and some scholarships are offered through the office of Diversity, and Inclusion with the goal of creating equal opportunities for students from marginalized groups. But Jacobson said the scholarships are discriminatory because they exclude other demographics.
“We don't accept that because we do not believe that the answer to past discrimination is more discrimination. We don't believe that more racism cures past racism,” Jacobson said.
The scholarships named in the complaint are:
- WMU Undocumented/DACA Scholarship
- Doctors Paul Brown & Bassett Brown and the V. Delores Brown Scholarship
- Dr. William F. Pickard Endowed Scholarship
- Elissa Gatlin Endowed Scholarship
- Dulcet Scholarship
- Dr. Susan Burns Scholarship
- Lillian Meyer Scholarship
- A. Edith Mange Distinguished Scholarship
Two scholarships - the Dulcet Scholarship and the WMU Undocumented/DACA Scholarship - have been removed from the WMU ODI website since July 8, according to web archives. The WMU Undocumented/DACA Scholarship is still publicly viewable on WMU's main scholarships and grants page, while the Dulcet scholarship is no longer publicly viewable via WMU's website.
