You may recall that economist Mark J. Perry, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, recently notched a civil-rights victory at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO).

Unfortunately, as scholar Adam Kissel has noted (“Sex discrimination in Oklahoma higher education”), there’s much more work to be done in this state. It appears that many programs—at the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, the University of Tulsa, Northeastern State University, and elsewhere—are discriminatory. “Not only might these programs violate federal law,” Kissel pointed out, “but most of them might also violate the state constitutional provision against preferential treatment or discrimination in public education on the basis of sex. They also might violate the institutions’ own rules and policies against discrimination.

“Taking them together,” he writes, “one might see not just an unlawful bias in individual programs, but institutional bias at entire universities and in the public postsecondary system altogether.”

Kissel suggests that “the civil rights staff in the state Attorney General’s office may have some work to do.”

For his part, Kissel has filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education alleging several violations of Title VI and Title IX by East Central University (ECU) in Ada. Key excerpts from his complaint:

1. Black Alumni Association Scholarship. This scholarship is exclusively for “students of color” at ECU. Funds are held by the ECU Foundation, which is either controlled or substantially supported by ECU (senior officers have ECU email addresses and the foundation website is hosted by ECU and uses ECU branding). ECU President Katricia Pierson personally appears in a video soliciting contributions for this race-based, color-based scholarship, in a funding campaign that ran through today, February 23, 2021: “I’m asking for your assistance in helping our African-American students.”
2. ECU’s list of Teacher Education Departmental Scholarships includes the Donnie and Shirley Nero Student Teaching Scholarship, which “will be awarded to a minority Education student in his/her semester of student teaching.” This scholarship requires an application that is common to Teacher Education Departmental Scholarships, but this application does not appear to establish a pooled-scholarship scheme that would satisfy Title VI. Further, the application available from the webpage notes that more than one scholarship expresses a priority on the basis of race. Therefore, it is clear that “minority” means “a racial minority group,” as the application states, in violation of Title VI.
3. The list of Teacher Education Departmental Scholarships cited in allegation 2 also includes the Wayne Cobb Scholarship, which “will be awarded to a male student,” in violation of Title IX. This scholarship requires an application that is common to Teacher Education Departmental Scholarships, but this application does not appear to establish a pooled-scholarship scheme that would satisfy Title IX.
4. ECU’s list of Biology Department scholarships includes the SBC Scholarship, which “will be awarded to minority students in the areas of math, science, or engineering.” A reasonable person understands that this scholarship is exclusive to racial minorities, in violation of Title VI. This scholarship does not appear to be part of any pooled-scholarship scheme that would satisfy Title VI.
5. ECU’s list of Department of Art scholarships includes the Nora Marie Casiano Scholarship, which “will be awarded to a student with a declared major of Art, within the School of Fine Arts at East Central University. Preference will be given to women or non-binary persons of color” in violation of Title IX (sex and gender identity) and Title VI (race/color). This scholarship does not appear to be part of any pooled-scholarship scheme that would satisfy Title VI or Title IX.
6. ECU’s Ruben and Karla Elizarde Centennial Athletic Endowment scholarship “is awarded to a student-athlete of Hispanic heritage, male or female, who has completed athletic eligibility but still needs additional hours to obtain a bachelor’s or master’s degree.” The scholarship’s exclusive availability to students of “Hispanic heritage” violates Title VI, and this scholarship does not appear to be part of any pooled-scholarship scheme that would satisfy Title VI.

Let’s hope ECU corrects course as UCO did. As Perry has said, “America’s universities are finally for the first time being held accountable for violating federal civil rights laws that are supposed to protect the civil rights all students, faculty, and staff and not just the civil rights of the ‘preferred groups.’”

(Image: East Central University)