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Could UVa Really Be Planning Racially Restrictive Programs?

Last night Maurice Apprey, the Dean of African American Affairs at the University of Virginia, seemed to announce plans to launch a series of new racially restrictive programs.

The Office of African-American Affairs plans to establish new programs designed to promote graduate study among black and other minority students and to initiate more open interethnic dialogue among community members, OAAA Dean Maurice Apprey said last night during his ?Student Affairs as Capacity Building? address.

The OAAA, according to Apprey, will seek to promote greater black and other minority involvement in graduate programs and make the preparation such schools require more accessible. New support programs advocating a greater number of minority students in University graduate schools will be implemented in the OAAA during the coming years to accomplish these goals, he said.

?We want to increase [the number of these students] in the Comm School, the Medical School and the Law School,? Apprey said, adding that the proposed support programs will better enable students to succeed in those schools in the future.
One new program aimed at better preparing black and other minority students for the Commerce School is a summer preparatory program, Apprey said.

?There will also be a Ph.D. and M.D. program in order to provide sustained and uninterrupted work toward a [minority student?s] Ph.D. or M.D.,? Apprey added.

According to the Cavalier Daily article, Apprey did not explain why the preparation of any students at UVa for graduate programs is currently not satisfactory or exactly what preparation or advice is not now sufficiently ?accessible? for black students.

Apprey did not say explicitly that these programs would be restricted by race, but that?s certainly the implication of describing new programs out of an Office of African American Affairs whose aim is to increase the number of minorities in various graduate programs. The description given for the summer program does explicitly say that it is for ?black and other minority students,? and the Ph.D and M.D. program appears to allow for ?sustained and uninterrupted work? only for minority students.

I wonder if Dean Apprey checked with the University?s legal counsel before announcing these programs. He certainly should have, since racially restrictive programs have not been holding up very well lately. If these programs are implemented as hinted here, the lawyers may be quite busy defending them.

Full post as published by Discriminations on February 05, 2008 (boomark / email).