Rule Is Voided on Scholarships; Naivete Cited

Insisting he had been “legally correct” but admitting he had been “politically naive,” the Education Department’s civil rights chief Tuesday abandoned his controversial position against scholarships reserved for minorities.

“This is a reversal,” Assistant Secretary of Education Michael L. Williams said. “I had no way of knowing what I did would cause the firestorm it did.”

But in trying to undo the controversy he created last week, Williams appears to have caused vast new confusion among college administrators by creating new rules restricting the funds they can use to pay for minority scholarship programs.

College and university officials reached after Williams’ announcement said the new policy hastily cobbled together by lawyers from the White House, the Education Department and the Justice Department could create nearly as many problems for some minority scholarship programs as the old one did.

And outraged conservatives, who had applauded Williams’ position last week, were threatening litigation.

“There is no question that this is not over,” said John Scully, counsel for the Washington Legal Foundation, whose complaint about scholarships reserved for black students had sparked the department’s original stand. “They are just caving in to political pressure.”

Williams made little attempt to deny the charge that his new decision was political.

“I am here to announce what is a new political--a new position--of the Department of Education,” he said in an apparent slip of the tongue as he announced the revised policy.

Williams denied he was “ordered” to change his mind. But he conceded that the new policy was not written by him but was, instead, drawn up in a “consultative process” at the White House, where “I had a seat at the table.”

President Bush said at the White House the new plan “does what I want to see, and that is to continue these minority scholarships as best we can.” But he predicted the issue eventually would end up in court.

The new policy on how Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act affects scholarships has three basic parts.

--First, the Education Department will essentially do nothing about minority scholarships for four years to ensure that no current scholarships are jeopardized.

During that period, the department will continue to investigate complaints, if it receives any, but will not begin “any broad compliance review,” according to the department’s new policy statement. In the last nine years, the department had only eight complaints about minority scholarships, department officials said, and the department has never in its history taken an enforcement action against any school on the grounds of violating Title VI.

--Second, the Education Department will take no position on minority scholarships funded by state and local governments. That would appear to exempt most minority scholarships at the University of California, for example, where about 8% of the system’s $335 million in scholarship funds are reserved for graduate students who are members of minority groups. Most of the money for those scholarships is appropriated by the Legislature, officials said.

--Third, private colleges will be free to continue to reserve scholarships for minorities if the donors of scholarship funds specify that is how they want their money used. But the department will continue to maintain that private colleges should not use their own funds for racially exclusive scholarships, he said.

That distinction appeared to be an attempt to preserve at least a portion of Williams’ original position that scholarships reserved only for minority students violate Title VI. But Williams conceded that the distinction between donated funds and a school’s own funds was not based on any particular legal theory. The department wanted to “provide some flexibility” to schools, he said.

In fact, however, the new distinction may only sow confusion, academic administrators said.

“It’s crazy,” said Richard F. Rosser, president of the National Assn. of Independent Colleges and Universities, which represents some 800 private four-year liberal arts institutions.

Although no one seems to know how many scholarships are awarded on the basis of race, one of the largest sources of racially exclusive scholarship funds is the federal government. It runs two scholarship programs--the Patricia Roberts Harris Fellowships and the National Science Foundation’s minority scholarship fund--which assist minority group members attending graduate schools.

Neither the Education Department’s new policy nor its old policy ever affected those funds.

Nor does the department’s stand affect scholarship funds that are controlled by private groups, rather than by schools themselves. The Civil Rights Act only affects organizations, such as colleges, that receive federal aid.

Such private scholarships are common. At the University of Southern California, for example, several students receive scholarships provided by local groups that raise money specifically for area black or Latino students, said Cliff Sjogren, USC’s dean of admissions and financial aid.

By contrast, USC’s own funds are “given out based on need,” Sjogren said. “We want to attract under-represented minority students and meet their needs, but the money is not set aside only for minorities,” he said.

Most major colleges and universities take a similar position, although minority-exclusive funds appear to be somewhat more common on the graduate school level.

Staff writer David G. Savage contributed to this story.