NAACP Calls for Bluefield State Investigation

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — West Virginia should investigate employment practices at Bluefield State College because of the school's lack of minority faculty and staff, according to a resolution approved by state NAACP members last month.
The resolution was one of several approved during the final day of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's 55th annual state convention, a two-day meeting held at Huntington's Radisson Inn.
Bluefield State was for years the only historically Black college in the United States with no Black faculty members, according to the unanimously approved resolution. The institution receives $1.1 million in federal grants annually for being a historically Black college.
"The president of Bluefield State, Dr. Robert Moore, has not seriously and sincerely taken adequate steps" to hire Black professors, and the school has discouraged minority employment, according to the resolution.
Last year, Bluefield professor Garret Olmsted, claimed he was fired after criticizing the administration for its failure to recruit Black students and faculty. An administrative law judge ruled in November that the school had to rehire Olmsted (see Black Issues, Nov. 26, 1998).
Bluefield State at the time had two Black professors and only 205 Black students out of a student body of 2,500, according to published reports. An 11-member task force had been appointed in November 1997 to advise Moore on recruiting minority faculty and students. At that time, the school had no Black faculty or administrators (see Black Issues, June 11, 1998).

University of Georgia to Admit Student Suing Over Rejection
ATHENS, Ga. — The University of Georgia has decided to admit 19-year-old Jennifer L. Johnson in hopes of settling a lawsuit in which she says her application was rejected because she's White and a woman.
"It's my understanding from the attorneys that this should render this particular lawsuit moot," says university spokesman Tom Jackson. "We're doing so on the advice of the attorney general and the chancellor."
Johnson's lawsuit is the third filed against the university by Atlanta attorney Lee Parks, who says the Athens school illegally uses race as a factor in its admissions. But despite the university's offer, Parks says Johnson plans to attend freshman orientation at Mercer University, her second choice, and adds that he does not intend to drop the suit.
The lawsuit says a set of university-developed criteria called the Total Student Index penalized Johnson, who applied to the school last October. She scored 4.10 on the index, which looks at grades, test scores, extracurricular activities, and a family's educational background. To be accepted at the university, applicants must score at least 4.66 on the index.
Johnson would have received an extra 0.5 of a point if she had been a minority and a 0.25 of a point if she had been male, Parks says. That would have raised her score to 4.85.