ANNANDALE, Va.
A Virginia community college will end five small
ace-based scholarship programs following a complaint filed with the
U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights.
The case involving Northern Virginia Community College in suburban Washington, D.C., is unusual because the scholarship funds came from private donors, not the college's own dollars. However, the institution did administer these programs, a practice that officials with the Office for Civil Rights found unacceptable given the current legal climate.
Despite support for the scholarships among faculty and staff, the federal agency's decision was not a surprise given the string of recent setbacks for affirmative action, said Dr. Richard Ernst, the college president.
"This is a national trend," he said, "and we're now part of it."
Northern Virginia's case also is another extension of a 1994 Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Ap- peals ruling against the University of Maryland and its Benjamin Banneker scholarship program. That scholarship funded with public money, not private .dollars as in the Virginia case - came under attack in the court case of Podboresky v. Kirwan.
One expert says the source of funding is less important than who bears responsibility for running the program and selecting scholarship recipients. Northern Virginia Community College administered all of these scholarship programs, making decisions about which students received funds.
The key issue is "not who financed the scholarship, but who administered it," said Michael Olivas, a law professor at the University of Houston.
However, the Office for Civil Rights decision should have few implications nationwide, according to Olivas and other officials. The government simply followed guidelines from the Maryland case that apply only in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers the mid-Atlantic states.
"In that region, financial aid has to be administered as race-neutral, but admissions does not," Olivas said. Outside the region, "the sky's not falling" because of the decision, he added.
