Mo. universities revamp restrictive scholarships

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Various universities in Missouri are reconsidering minority scholarships and other programs after being challenged by groups campaigning against racially targeted college programs.

The assessment also comes months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the University of Michigan could use race as one factor in deciding which applicants to admit, though the high court struck down a separate points-based admissions scheme at Michigan.

The University of Missouri-Columbia has rewritten the qualifications for three minority scholarship programs, opening them to members of any "underrepresented ethnic group in higher education."

Saint Louis University said in November it has scrapped scholarships once available only to black students and replaced them with awards without racial restrictions. The move appears likely to head off a potential investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.

Washington University is standing by its scholars program named for a late black dean at the university and open only to black undergraduates.

The three Missouri schools were among the objects of a nationwide campaign against racially targeted college programs launched early last year by the Center for Equal Opportunity and the American Civil Rights Institute.

Both groups oppose racial preferences and, in jointly signed letters, had asked several dozen colleges and universities to end such programs -- or open them to all students. The letters claimed that the programs violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination by any institution that gets federal money.

The groups complained to the Office of Civil Rights about Saint Louis and Washington universities after they didn't get what they deemed satisfactory responses from the schools. Saint Louis' initial reply: the programs might be illegal, but the school had no plans to change them.

But now, Saint Louis has scrapped the blacks-only Ernest A. Calloway Jr. scholarships, named for the former president of the St. Louis NAACP and the Negro Labor Council. In its place are Martin Luther King scholarships, which can be claimed by any student "who can demonstrate leadership potential for promoting Dr. King's 'dream' of a diverse but unified America."

Under that program, applicants' grades and economic circumstances are among factors the school will weigh. Joe Weixlmann, the school's provost, said the goal still seeks a diverse student body.

The new scholarships will cost the university $3.2 million a year when fully phased in, compared with $1.32 million a year for the old ones, Weixlmann said.

Weixlmann said that in changing the scholarship criteria, the university was reacting less to the federal complaint than to the possible implications of the affirmative action decisions in June.

Washington University believes the Supreme Court's affirmative action rulings do nothing to undermine the school's blacks-only John B. Ervin Scholars Program scholarships, which pay up to full tuition for up to 10 students a year.

James McLeod, the university's vice chancellor for students, said the school rests its case for the scholarships on a decade-old Office of Civil Rights statement that it reads as supporting racially targeted programs.

"For now we are comfortable with where we are," he said.

At Missouri, Deputy Chancellor Michael Middleton said the university acted out of its own concern for the scholarships' legality, which predated the letter. The wording change, he said, signaled that the awards were broadly available, not just to blacks.