The U.S. Department of Education recently announced that it will open an investigation into allegedly discriminatory scholarships that are currently offered by the University of Rhode Island (URI) following a complaint made by a conservative non-profit organization.
On Jan. 6, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent the Equal Protection Project (EPP), which filed the initial complaint against URI, a letter announcing that it would open an investigation into the university’s allegedly discriminatory scholarships.
“OCR will investigate whether the University discriminates on the basis of race, color, or national origin,” the office stated in the letter. “OCR will also investigate whether the University discriminates on the basis of sex.”
EPP first filed its complaint in December, when it specifically noted 53 different scholarship programs that it contended discriminated on the basis of race or sex.
“URI’s explicit racial and sex-based scholarships are presumptively invalid, and since there is no compelling government justification for such invidious discrimination, URI’s offering, promotion, and administration of these programs violates state and federal civil rights statutes and constitutional equal protection guarantees,” the organization said in a press release at the time.
“The discrimination in scholarships at URI is shocking in its breadth, far exceeding any other university we have seen at the Equal Protection Project,” EPP founder William Jacobson told The Daily Wire about the complaint. “URI does not even try to hide the discriminatory barriers, they are all detailed on the URI website.”
The organization listed each of the scholarships that it challenged in its complaint, including the “Dubee Family Endowment Scholarship,” which will “preferably” be given to an African American students, and the URI Journalism Student Scholarship, which states in its description that “preference should be given to minority or women students.”
Previously, EPP filed similar complaints against the University of Wisconsin—Madison, the University of Virginia, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, Indiana University, and Fordham University among others.
The EPP has filed around 30 similar complaints against universities throughout the United States.
“At least half of the schools have changed their discriminatory practices in response to our complaints,” EPP founder William Jacobson has stated.
“After the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students For Fair Admission, it is clear that discriminating on the basis of race to achieve diversity is not lawful,” Jacobson has also explained.
Campus Reform has contacted the University of Rhode Island and the Department of Education for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
This article was originally published at campusreform.org
