Discriminatory Scholarships From Repeat Offender Ithaca College Challenged By Equal Protection Project

Discriminatory Scholarships From Repeat Offender Ithaca College 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, or ethnicity. We have filed over two dozen complaints and legal actions in the year since launch in February 2023, with over half the schools withdrawing or modifying the discriminatory programs. (See EPP Mid-2024 Impact Reports.)

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 Ithaca College. In some respects this is similar to other cases, but this one has a twist – Ithaca College is a repeat offender, having been named in at least two prior complaints by other persons which resulted in the college dropping or altering those discriminatory programs.

One of the prior programs was the subject of an article in The College Fix in October 2022, Ithaca College scrubs minorities-only pre-med program after complaint:

Ithaca College officials removed information on an event geared toward “BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and People of Color] middle and high school students interested in a career in medicine,” just one day after being informed of a federal complaint filed against the school….

The Project Access physician assistant program, scheduled for October 8, constituted “illegal race-based discrimination in violation of Title VI [of the 1964 Civil Rights Act],” University of Michigan Flint professor emeritus Mark Perry alleged in a complaint to the federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Note that Mark Perry recently joined EPP as a Senior Research Fellow. Perry also previously filed an OCR Complaint against Ithaca College over the Martin Luther King (“MLK”) Scholars Program which restricted eligibility to “PoC students” (students of color). That complaint was dismissed as “moot” by OCR after Ithaca College modified the eligibility criteria.

Despite two prior contested scholarships and programs, Ithaca College continues to discriminate, leading to EPP’s Civil Rights Complaint:

We bring this civil rights complaint against Ithaca College for creating, supporting and promoting two racially discriminatory scholarships for undergraduate students. As detailed and documented below, only undergraduate “students of color” are allowed to participate in these scholarship programs. Applicants who do not meet the race- and color-based criterion are ineligible for them.

Because the scholarships discriminate based on race and skin color, they violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VI”) and its implementing regulations.1

The Scholarships

Ithaca College maintains a “BIPOC Unity Center”2 whose goals include “empowering IC students to resist and interrupt systems of oppression” and “foster[ing] BIPOC student belonging and brave spaces to be seen, be valued, and be heard.”3

Through the BIPOC Unity Center, Ithaca College awards two scholarships per academic year – the Rashad G. Richardson “I Can Achieve” Memorial Scholarship (“Richardson Scholarship”) and the African-Latino Society Memorial Scholarship (“ALS Scholarship”).4

According to an informational page on the Ithaca College website that describes both scholarships, the Richardson Scholarship “is intended to recognize a high-achieving, student of color at Ithaca College,” and that “[t]he ideal candidate will have made significant contributions toward improving the quality of life for PoC [Person of Color] youth in the Tompkins County community.”5

Similarly, the ALS Scholarship “is awarded to a student of color at Ithaca College who has made significant contributions to the Ithaca College campus,” and “aims to honor a student who has worked to influence and promote the academic, political, social, economic, and cultural welfare of students of color at IC and the greater Ithaca community.”6

The webpage states that both of these scholarships will be awarded for the 2024-2025 academic year.7 A screenshot of the informational webpage is reproduced below:

We then go on to discuss why these scholarships violate the law, and the importance of OCR taking remedial action given Ithaca College’s past history:

The Office for Civil Rights has the power and obligation to investigate Ithaca College’s role in creating, offering and promoting the Richardson and ALS Scholarships – and to discern whether Ithaca College is engaging in such discrimination in its other activities.

This is particularly important here because this is not the first time that Ithaca College has engaged in blatant race- and color-based discrimination. In 2022, a separate OCR complaint was brought against Ithaca College for its sponsorship of a racially discriminatory program called the Martin Luther King (“MLK”) Scholars Program. See OCR Case No. 02-21-2073. That complaint alleged that the MLK Scholars Program restricted eligibility to “PoC students” (students of color) and illegally excluded students who did not fall within that category. By letter dated November 7, 2022, OCR dismissed the complaint on the grounds that, during OCR’s investigation, Ithaca College modified the eligibility criteria for the MLK Scholars Program to remove the racially discriminatory requirement thereby rendering the OCR complaint “moot.”

Less than two years later, Ithaca College – under the apparent belief that U.S. Department of Education’s OCR will not take any meaningful action against it for doing so – not only continues to engage in flagrantly illegal race- and color-based discrimination, but has expanded its racially exclusionary programming by creating and promoting the undergraduate scholarships at issue here.

It is therefore of paramount importance that this time around OCR impose remedial relief that will not only hold Ithaca College accountable for its unlawful conduct but that also will send a powerful deterrent message to it and other institutions that invidious discrimination will not be tolerated. This includes, if necessary, imposing fines, initiating administrative proceedings to suspend or terminate federal financial assistance and referring the case to the Department of Justice for judicial proceedings to enforce the rights of the United States under federal law. After all, “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch., 551 U.S. at 748.

EPP is in a major expansion mode, and we expect to broaden our challenges to racially discriminatory programs.  But we need your help. We are a small organization going up against powerful and wealthy government and private institutions devoted to DEI discrimination. Donations are greatly needed and appreciated.

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