Even after placing itself on the front lines of the battle to defend affirmative action, Syracuse University has escaped the latest attack, a barrage of letters from conservative think tanks aiming to open minority programs at colleges to white students.

The Center for Equal Opportunity and the American Civil Rights Institute have jointly sent letters to about 30 colleges and universities threatening a federal complaint if the schools do not open scholarships and enrichment programs designed for minority students to white students as well.

SU, which practices affirmative action in its admission process and has filed an amicus curiae brief in the University of Michigan U.S. Supreme Court cases defending those policies, did not receive a letter because it does not operate programs exclusively for minorities, SU spokesman Matthew Schneider said.

While the university does operate programs with a heavy minority enrollment, they are open to any and all students who wish to attend, Schneider said. Even though SU has fewer than 900 students of color, the racial balance in programs such as SummerStart, which is designed to ease the transition to college for incoming freshmen, is fairly even, which is a large increase from the normal SU enrollment, said Horace Smith, associate vice president for undergraduate studies and retention in the division of student affairs. The university’s goal is to recruit a diverse student body, then provide minorities and disadvantaged students with the support they need once they choose SU.

‘The one thing we want to do on our campus is diversity,’ Smith said. ‘You’re damn right we’re going to recruit students of color.’

The Center for Equal Opportunity and and American Civil Rights Institute are targeting programs at schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton, Cornell and Ohio State universities that they believe are discriminatory. If the schools refuse to open the programs, the groups will file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education. While some schools like MIT initially chose to resist, most opened the programs to avoid increased liability and battles before increasingly hostile courts, said Roger Clegg, chief council for the Center for Equal Opportunity.

David Gersten, executive director of the center, said that these minority programs are even more insidious because they use race to exclude students, rather than using it as an ambiguous ‘plus factor.’ Remedial programs for minorities are even worse because they imply that all minority students struggle academically, he said.

‘If you are going to suggest that only blacks need remedial English programs, then you are in a sense suggesting that all blacks have problems with their English skills,’ Gersten said.

He would like to see these programs opened to economically disadvantaged white students as well. Integrating the programs would help ease some of the racial tension that he said he has seen growing on college campuses since his days at the University of Maryland more than 20 years ago.

‘It would be a very good step in the right direction because there you’re talking about real diversity,’ Gersten said.

Anthony Buissereth, editor in chief of The Black Voice and a senior African-American studies and sociology major who recently demonstrated in support of affirmative action in front of the Supreme Court, felt that problems with integration begin in high school. Many white students, he said, transfer out of poorly funded inner-city schools to attend private schools.

‘It’s not that students of color don’t want to integrate,’ Buissereth said. ‘It’s that white students and white parents don’t want their children going to school with minority kids.’

Buissereth leveled some harsh criticism at Center for Equal Opportunity President Linda Chavez. President George W. Bush nominated Chavez as secretary of labor in 2001, but she was forced to withdraw her name after it was revealed that she once employed illegal immigrants in her home. People like Chavez who use their minority status to gain stature often forget that they owe something to minorities once they gain power, Buissereth said.

The real reason that conservative think tanks are attacking minority programs is a fear of the political power wielded by educated minorities, he said.

‘They attack it because they understand the power of thinking masses of people who are oppressed,’ Buissereth said.

Published on April 10, 2003 at 12:00 pm