In a letter to Auburn University president Christopher Roberts and philanthropist Beth Thorne Stukes, the chairman of the Auburn University Foundation's board, the American Civil Rights Project (ACR Project) issued a warning that Auburn was supporting the administration of "illegal, race-based scholarships."
"[I]t appears that Auburn University ('Auburn') and its supporting foundation maintain and administer illegal, race-based scholarships," the letter states, adding a document retention request in the case that they file litigation on the matter in the future.
The ACR Project's Alabama co-counsel, Ben DuPré of Montgomery law firm McLure and Associates, explained in a press release, "When state officials and private actors willfully engage in 'joint activity' that discriminates on the basis of race, they violate the Equal Protection Clause."
DuPré added, "Auburn and the Auburn Foundation should be promoting the Auburn Creed's belief in 'obedience to law because it protects the rights of all,' instead of funding racial preferences for a few."
According to the letter, "Until recently, Auburn's website openly touted a wide variety of racially discriminatory scholarship opportunities. As recently as April, the Auburn University Scholarship Opportunity Management ('AUSOM') page reflected 64 scholarships either openly preferring or expressly limiting their benefits to only those "from underrepresented groups."
The letter adds, "While the university has seemingly stripped that search functionality from the AUSOM website, the scholarships themselves remain on the AUSOM page. For example (and without our purporting to have identified all such examples), the AUSOM page continues to describe each of the following scholarships just as it did previously, with each maintaining racial preferences or expressly racial criteria for eligibility."
In explaining that the actions of the university administering the funds through the foundation do not give the university cover, Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the ACR Project, explained, "Alabama courts have long recognized that captive foundations are alter egos of their schools. Even if they hadn't, federal law can't so easily be defeated by legal fictions. Congress and the Constitution barred schools from both racially discriminating and from conspiring to racially discriminate."
"All told, publicly available records provide grounds for serious concern regarding whether Auburn and its supporting foundation are violating federal law by offering race-based scholarships," the letter reads.
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