ATLANTA
Alumni and supporters of
Georgia’s historically Black public colleges
and universities are beginning to mobilize in
reaction to a law suit filed last month that
seeks to increase white enrollment at those
schools.
The suit claims that Georgia’s three Black
public universities–Albany State, Fort Valley
State, and Savannah State–remain in a
second-class status. It cites a
disproportionate number of remedial students
attending the Black institutions while a
disproportionate number of high achievers
attend predominantly white schools like
Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia.
It calls on the Board of Regents to admit
more whites to the three campuses and offer
preferential admissions to students based on
socioeconomics, not race.
The schools, which are more than 88
percent Black, should be more integrated,
maintains attorney Lee Parks, the lawyer who
helped dismantle the former
majority-Black congressional district of U.S.
Representative Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga.
“We believe the correct approach to this long
term problem is not to close the Black
colleges, but to integrate them,” Parks said in
a letter he sent to Georgia’s higher education
officials.
Parks also argued that the Regents must
simultaneously commit to a significant
increase in Black student enrollment at
predominantly white schools, via a “uniform,
systemwide admissions policy.”
Filed in U.S. District Court in Savannah,
the suit is lust an extension of the
anti-affirmative action wave sweeping the
country says Fort Valley State alumnus and
former congressional aide Thomas W. Dortch.
“What they want to do is keep setting
fires,” he said. The minute we’re busy putting
one fire out, here comes another one.
Dortch has joined forces with Georgia
Rep. Calvin Smyre, chair of the House Higher
Education Committee. They met with State
Attorney General Mike Bowers, who last
year wrote a letter to university system
chancellor Stephen R. Portch demanding that
all race-based policies in the
system must end. That letter echoed the
U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision
made in the Hopwood vs. The State of Texas
case, which threw out an admissions policy
that gave preferential treatment to students
applying to the University of Texas School of
Law.
“We’ll have to wait and see how this
plays out,” said Smyre, who is also a Fort
Valley State alumnus. To me, it’s a situation
where it will be hard to maintain the
integrity of Georgia’s higher education and for
us to be a model higher education state
without addressing some of these issues
raised.” Smyre said he hopes the suit will be
mediated.
