Legal analyst says she is also concerned about the software
The “Environmentalists of Color Scholarship ” at University of California Berkeley has been renamed following a federal civil rights issue, but this does not resolve the issue, according to the lobbying group which first raised concerns.
Now called “Rooted in Joy, ” the scholarship includes the goals of bridging “institutional gaps in resources and funding for students to increase retention ” and “[building ] radically inclusive social and environmental justice spaces on campus, ” according to its website.
It even aims to “financially help excited individuals working in the crossroads of communities of color and the environmental field at UC Berkeley. ”
The school, up until recently, said the award aimed to “financially help students of color working in the environmental field at UC Berkeley. ”
The school is “aware of press information that a problem has been filed with [Office for Civil Rights ] regarding this matter, ” representative Janet Gilmore told The College Fix via email.
“As a first step, [the university has ] updated the program website, ” Gilmore said. “UC Berkeley is committed to complying with all state and federal laws regarding discrimination and related matters, ” and is “looking into the matter regarding this particular program, ” she also said.
“If it is out of adherence, we will correct it quickly, ” the college told The Fix.
The adjustments followed a national civil rights issue by Defending Education, which alleged the award violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of competition.
According to the Defending Education complaint, the scholarship previously stated: “BIPOC ( Black, Indigenous, Persons-of-Color ) are frequently asked to exclusively call upon their experiences with racial trauma and violence in applications. [ The scholarship administrators ] aim to resist that tokenization by making space for applicants to consider their identities from the lens of radical healing, joy, and growth. ”
The site also recently included a description of “person of color ” in its Q & A portion, as being a status of being that “goes beyond simply skin color, and can include an integrative expanse of cultural, racial, and ethnic experiences and identities. ”
However, problems remain, according to Sarah Perry, vice chairman and constitutional fellow at Defending Education.
She told The Fix on a phone interview, “the fact that they’ve renamed [the Environmentalist of Color scholarship ] the ‘Rooted in Joy’ scholarship does n’t necessarily have direct impact on where the money is being spent and the qualifications for how it ’s being spent. ”
To Perry, the relabeling of the scholarship and the removal of certain information from the website simply signal that the university “know[s ] which way the [political ] winds are blowing. ”
Perry said this is an “implicit recognition that what [the university was ] doing was racial[ly ] discriminatory. ”
UC Berkeley is far from alone in this usage of racially biased scholarships, according to Perry. She said Defending Education has now launched “four full civil rights issues against institutions of higher learning, ” list the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Indiana University, as three different recipients of national issues.
Also, Defending Education is creating a research examining “where La is still working at American institutions of higher education. ”
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Perry says that many colleges use techniques such as the rebranding of fellowships to “fly underneath the sensor. ” Colleges “have rebranded diversity, equity and inclusion headquarters to various names, many of them have renamed fellowships, as UC Berkeley has done, many of them have kind of retooled some of their plans. ”
Perry says that the goal of Defending Education is closely connected to reducing discrimination of any kind in elementary, high school, and institutions of higher education: “We are trying to get politics and divisive ideologies out of American education. ”
While 8th grade students in American education are averaging “about a 30 percent literacy rate in math and English, ” Perry says the government is “spending hard-earned taxpayer dollars on race essentialism. ”
What the country needs, according to Perry, is “to be predominantly concerned with academic excellence and making sure that individuals who graduate from institutions of higher education can go on to live fruitful, flourishing lives in the career that they desire. ”
The university offers other scholarships based on identities, such as a scholarship for “Queer identifying students and allies and/or students working at the intersection of LGBTQIA + and the environment. ”
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: The previous page for ‘Environmentalists of Color, ’ at UC-Berkeley; University of California Berkeley
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