UH tuition
policy probedFederal funding of the university
could be affected if civil rights
investigators find it discriminates
in favor of native Hawaiians
The University of Hawaii's policy of giving some native Hawaiian students tuition waivers or preferential tuition rates is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported this week.
In a report on its Web site dated for Friday, the Chronicle outlines the quiet moves by U.S. universities and colleges to open their minority programs to students of any race to avoid accusations of discrimination.
It reports federal discrimination investigations are under way at Hawaii, Pepperdine University, Seton Hall University, Virginia Tech, Washington University in St. Louis and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Officials at the federal agency's Seattle office, which was assigned the investigation of alleged racial discrimination at UH, did not return telephone calls yesterday from The Associated Press seeking information.
While the Chronicle said the Office of Civil Rights has not disclosed the source of the complaint against UH, former Hawaii attorney John Goemans said it is based on a complaint he filed nearly two years ago, warning a finding of discrimination could jeopardize the school's federal funding.
In a series of complaints filed with the Bush administration in June 2002, Goemans also challenged a $400 million federal loan to provide fiberoptic lines to some 20,000 Hawaiian homesteaders, a 400-home Hawaiian Homes project that he said violates the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the federal tax-exempt status for the private Kamehameha Schools, which restricts admission to students of Hawaiian ancestry.
Goemans represented Big Island rancher Harold "Freddy" Rice in his lawsuit that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court's Feb. 23, 2000, ruling striking down Hawaiians-only voting for trustees of the state's Office of Hawaiian Affairs as unconstitutional racial discrimination.
Goemans, who recently moved to California, said yesterday that he has been in frequent contact with the investigator at the Office of Civil Rights, who indicated to him that the UH investigation is continuing.
"By continuing these racial admission policies, the university puts at risk a very large amount of federal funding from the Department of Education which the department is obligated by law to terminate," he said.
When the initial complaint was filed, UH spokesman Jim Manke said tuition waivers that go to native Hawaiians were based either on financial need or merit and not on ethnicity.
However, the university's Web site this week includes information on a Kahuewai Ola tuition waiver scholarship for 20 native Hawaiian students at the Manoa campus. The No. 1 condition is that the student "be of Native Hawaiian ancestry."
The university also allows out-of-state students of Hawaiian ancestry to pay the resident tuition rate. The out-of-state tuition is three times the resident tuition.
University officials did not return telephone calls seeking information on the school's current policy.
The Chronicle noted that a federal appeals court in 1994 struck down the University of Maryland at College Park's scholarship program for black students. It also noted that the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights issued a statement that programs using race or national origin "as sole eligibility criteria are extremely difficult to defend."
While the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last June upholding the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor's race-conscious admissions policies initially was seen as a victory for affirmative action, college attorneys were troubled by the court's finding that colleges must treat students as individuals and not accept or reject them from programs based solely on race, the Chronicle said.
By last fall, many lawyers concluded their schools could no longer offer scholarships and programs solely for members of certain racial and ethic groups, it said.
"In recent months, those doubts have translated into a widespread retreat from race-exclusivity," the Chronicle said.
As examples, it noted:
>> The California Institute of Technology has opened to white and Asian students a program that recruited black, Hispanic and American Indians to study engineering or the sciences;
>> The University of Colorado at Boulder has renamed its Summer Minority Access to Research Training program to the Summer Multicultural Access to Research Training, and opened it to white students;
>> The University of Delaware's Presidential Awards program for minority graduate students has expanded its selection criteria to include nonminority students who have "challenging circumstances."
