It looks like UVA altered their website after being charged for Title VI violations.
Following the filing of a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, the University of Virginia appears to have modified the description of a mentorship program for BIPOC students on its website.
The University of Virginia was charged on October 1st with “creating, sponsoring and promoting a racially discriminatory program called the BIPOC Alumni-Student Mentoring Program” by the Equal Protection Project (EPP), citing the exclusion of White students from the initiative intended to support peers who belong to the “Black, Indigenous and People of Color” category.
The program’s stated objective is to “improve BIPOC undergraduates’ program experiences, career opportunities, and retention through pairing these learners with alumni mentors,” according to the complaint; nevertheless, the EPP believes that all students should gain from such programs.
Because the BIPOC Mentoring Program bases a student’s eligibility for participation on their race, ethnicity, and skin color, it violates Title VI. Additionally, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is violated by UVA’s establishment, sponsorship, marketing, and hosting of this discriminatory program because it is a public university, according to the complaint, which Fox News Digital was able to get.
A request for an investigation into UVA’s “role in creating, promoting and administering this program and to impose whatever remedial relief is necessary to hold it accountable for that unlawful conduct” was made by the EPP to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The request noted that possible remedies included “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.”
According to its website, the program is “managed by EHD’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (ODEI) and is made possible by the generosity of the UVA Parents Program.” The BIPOC Alumni-Student Mentoring Program’s website had modifications, which the EPP discovered shortly after the complaint was submitted.
According to the Internet Archives Wayback Machine, the BIPOC Alumni-Student Mentoring Program was looking for “up to 25 BIPOC undergraduates” as recently as October 2, according to the school’s website.
Since then, it has been changed to state that the program was designed with BIPOC students in mind and that it is looking for “up to 25 undergraduates.”
Professor William A. Jacobson of Cornell Law established the EPP to guarantee that everyone is treated equally, regardless of race or ethnicity. He believes that the current changes represent a “admission of wrongdoing” and are insufficient in the extreme.
Jacobson told Fox News Digital, “UVA’s wording change so soon after our complaint is a tacit admission of wrongdoing.”
But even with these phrasing adjustments, UVA continues to indicate that the program was ‘designed with BIPOC students in mind,’ thus the issue is not entirely resolved. That is a dog whistle that says non-BIPOC (i.e., White) students are not welcome and that only BIPOC students are encouraged to apply,” Jacobson went on. “UVA needs to make the program fully open and welcoming to all students without regard to race rather than playing word games.”
According to the EPP’s website, its guiding principles are that racism has “no ‘good’ form” and that the “remedy for racism never is more racism.”
A spokesman for the University of Virginia indicated that the institution had not yet received the complaint and was unable to comment explicitly. However, the spokesperson directed Fox News Digital to the university’s anti-discrimination stance.
