UCI Awaits Word From State Officials on Scholarship Policy

IRVINE — UC Irvine officials announced Friday that they would await direction from state university officials before formulating a response to a U.S. Department of Education ruling prohibiting scholarships reserved for minority students.

“This is not a decision that the University of California, Irvine, makes independent of the University of California,” said Linda Granell, UCI’s director of communications. “We have not even been notified by the Department of Education on the ruling, so we don’t have a position on something we have only seen in news reports.”

The university’s announcement came two days after Michael Williams, assistant secretary of education for civil rights, warned at a Washington press conference that scholarships earmarked for minorities could be in violation of federal civil rights law and that colleges awarding funds on the basis of ethnicity could have their share of federal grant money withdrawn.

According to Granell, UCI will continue its current scholarship policy until otherwise notified by the Office of the President of the University of California system, which interprets federal regulations for all nine UC campuses.

Several UCI officials have criticized the ruling, saying that the abolition of minority scholarships would severely cripple efforts to recruit more minority students, particularly Latinos and blacks.

“I think it could have a chilling effect on low-income minority families who believe that the kind of financial assistance may not be available,” said Manuel Gomez, UCI’s assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs.

James Dunning, director of admissions, agreed, saying that the ruling would probably deter prospective minority students from applying and force them instead to turn to other options.

“If they perceive that the atmosphere is less hospitable, if they perceive that an institution does not have the funding it has had (for minorities) in the past, then it may deter them from getting into the process of applying,” he said. “It just makes it easier for the African-American student to say, for example, the military is a bird in the hand, and that may be much more inviting to that person than higher education.”