Racial Segregation and the Northern University

...The result is that appellant is handicapped in his pursuit of effective graduate instruction...

...20 Whether or not Penn evades campus integration, Americans might well ask how valid the logic of Penn's stand is...

...Blacks live in black communities...

...At Columbia University, a separate-but-equal dormitory lounge is administered by Columbia officials...

...c) To make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination...

...As early as 1967, the federal government was annually disbursing contract funds to universities at the rate of 31/2 billion dollars a year...

...McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents) In the historic Brown decision of 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren approvingly cited the logic of McLaurin, saying that therein "the Court, in requiring that a Negro admitted to a white graduate school be treated like all other students, again resorted to intangible considerations...

...He may wait in line in the cafeteria and there stand and talk with his fellow students, but while he eats he must remain apart...

...A 1950 Supreme Court decision turned upon the status of a black graduate student, Mr...

...Nor would such intangible considerations be restricted to older students and irrelevant to undergraduates, since Justice Warren added, "Such considerations apply with added force to children in grade and high school...

...3 Ernest Dunbar, "The Black Studies Thing' The New York Times Magazine (April 6, 1969), p. 26...

...Approximately 50 percent of the money at Columbia comes from Washington14as does some 65 percent of the funds at Princeton.15 Even the "private" campuses' addiction to tax money may be permanent...

...Novembers, 1971), p. 4. 6 "an interview black concentration" Scholastic (Notre Dame, Ind.: November 19, 1971), p. 23...

...5 "editorial" Scholastic (Notre Dame, lnd...

...In the light of DeFunis, it is significant that there are nonacademic areas in which even more prominent institutions than the University of Washington have been overtly committed to still other modes of racial discrimination...

...Two sections were set up each in Dillon and Alumni Halls...

...If the criterion is to be skin color, it will be difficult to reconcile this with the Constitution, with Brown v. Board of Edu-caion, or with our civil rights laws...

...4 Frederick K. Lowell, ".Segregation Comes to Columbia" National Review (November 5, 1971), p. 1236...

...The Center is also open to Black students and their guests...

...and he is permitted to eat at the same time as other students, although here again he is assigned to a special table...

...Brown v. Board of Education) If the social practices of the huge white majority on the Oklahoma campus had to yield to integration so that justice be done a single black, it is correspondingly unlikely that the Court would allow a mere minority of students to repudiate integration...

...4 The Cornell University administration at one time "gave blacks a house for an Afro-American Center" and "set up a private dormitory for Negro coeds...

...1 The seeming double standard described above is found not only at one western law school, but also at universities as famous as, for example, Princeton or Cornell...

...It is, of course, certain that these instances of segregation are superficially distinguishable from the George Wallace-style segregation that was tolerated in the District of Columbia, the South, and border states...

...The Court found: "He is now assigned to a seat in the classroom in a row specified for colored students...

...Indeed, it seems a matter of elementary prudence, if not of survival itself, for college administrators in question not to wantonly question the humanity of federal policy makers...

...14 James Ridgeway, The Closed Corporation (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 7. 15 E. J. Kahn, Jr., Harvard (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1969), p. 340...

...18 Ibid., p. 226...

...The Evanston university "also agreed to the demand for separate recreational facilities by providing special meeting rooms and lounges...

...This does not logically distinguish the situations, however...

...9 Ibid...

...Yet if the criterion for any special treatment is to be poverty and/ or membership in a cultural minority it might be difficult to deny these privileges to, say, poor Southern whites...

...13 "Columbia U. faces federal fund loss" Chicago tun-Times (Novembers, 1971), p. 12...

...Any logical distinction between the Penn decision and the hypothetical Alabama project should be carefully articulated if our nation's laws are ever to be enforced equally upon North and South, black and white...

...Would Washington be complacent, for example, if Governor Wallace were to personally persuade the University of Alabama to establish residence and study projects (with remedial counseling and teaching) aimed exclusively toward white, Anglo-Saxon "issues and identities...

...16 Paul Seabury, "HEW & the Universities" Commentary (February, 1972), p. 39...

...2 Cornell University "began in 1965 to bring in black students whose SAT scores averaged only 450 to 550...

...G. W. McLaurin, at the University of Oklahoma...

...19 "Black Study Project, Open to All Races, Is Approved at Penn" The New York Times (April 7, 1972), p. 20 ibid...

...Ed...

...2 P. Bryan Lops, "Racism in Reverse At Prince ton" Human Events (February 5, 1972), p. 17...

...We would like to see an enlarged concentration...

...But there is no reason to think that such a forthright stand is in the offing...

...b) To discriminate against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection therewith, because of race, color, religion, or national origin...

...Instead, racial segregation at fashionable northern schools has been avowedly imposed to recognize intangible considerations bearing on cultural differences between black and white students...

...In the fall of 1969, the University, acting upon requests from a large number of black students on campus, instituted what became known as 'concentrations.' According to the provisions made at that time, large numbers (large, relative to existing conditions) of Blacks were to be allowed to live together in rooms set aside for that purpose...

...If so, scholars in our nation's finest universities will be passively prolonging our country's racial agonies by failing (again) to face up to genuine racial questions concerning their own house...

...5 The students so racially concentrated had by late 1971 frankly asserted that: "The idea of this section is to build for the future...

...8 Ohio State University in Columbus offered travel and accommodation expenses to non-Caucasian students attending a December 6, 1971 "Visitation Day" promoting graduate school possibilities...

...Ironically, the more eloquently that black students depict the richness and uniqueness of Afro-American culture, the more they demonstrate how segregation handicaps their white classmates by robbing the whites of a healthy, everyday exposure to that culture...

...The university must give 'special recognition and special concern' to the black students...

...he is assigned to a table in the library on the main floor...

...The court therefore held: "The (non-minority member) plaintiff and others in this group, have not in my opinion been accorded the equal protection of the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment...

...It is true that the northern university administrations cited above have not enforced racial discrimination for the single-minded purpose of either white or black supremacy...

...Office for Civil Rights to notify the Ivy League school "that it could lose its present and future federal contract rights...

...A guest can be defined as someone who shares a common cuture, heritage, color consciousness and is a son or daughter of Africa...

...This discrimination specifically has included segregated lounges, meeting rooms, houses, and dormitories...

...1 "Law Schools...

...As early as fiscal year 1967, Columbia University 17and Princeton University18 averaged over $10,623,000 apiece in defense contracts alone...

...l0 The ideas of black spokesmen at Notre Dame flow in a similar vein: "The Notre Dame community is trying to reach a basic ideal, yet it is not being true to form as to what society really represents...

...This was although among Cornell's students "the average scores are between 600 and 700...

...That university, acknowledging its academic duties, admitted McLaurin, but practiced segregation in non-academic situations...

...In the DeFunis case, dealing with racial discrimination in law school entry, the trial judge was to find: "It seems to me that the law school here wished to achieve greater minority representation and in accomplishing this gave preference to the members of some races...

...Nevertheless, the campuses are highly vulnerable to federal pressures...

...11 Awkwardly for the parties involved, this sort of rationalized racial discrimination may be untenable, at least for state universities, even independently of the Civil Rights Acts...

...admissions" American Bar Association Journal (December...

...This is our one goal...

...These post-1968 accommodations, lounges, dormitories, and houses are intriguing considering the spirit of the fair housing provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which read that: ". . .it shall be unlawful"(a) To refuse to sell or rent after the making of a bona fide offer, or to refuse to negotiate for the sale or rental of, or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, or national origin...

...Were educators to do so, current university practices might be no more (1l) legal or (un)just, but would at least be far less hypocritical...

...It is this idea of 'not equal but special' that dictates the specific plans detailed in the remainder of the document...

...Those members of the campus community who may or may not relax in this "Malcolm X Liberation Center" divide along racial lines: " 'The Liberation Center is open to all Black students, Black staff, and Black workers...

...A draft agreement between Northwestern administrators and pro-segregation student organizations in 1968 was reported as recognizing that, "The idea of 'simply obliterating in our laws and in our personal relations the distinctions between races' does not come to grips with the real problems facing Northwestern...

...Sporadic DeFunis-type suits may long be parried with Penn-like finesse...

...This project was successfully promoted by the April 20, 1970 seizure of a R.O.T.C...

...And we more or less band together, to help ourselves adjust to college life...

...10 Frederick K. Lowell, "Segregation Comes to Columbia" National Review (November 5, 1971), p. 1236...

...We are trying to make certain accomplishments and have so many good plusses in our favor that not only incoming freshmen, but other blacks on campus would want to come to Dillon and be part of a living black society...

...1' (emphasis added) A news story on the project at Penn reported that "Because the concept of the program and the content of its remedial counseling and teaching will be directed exclusively to black issues and identities, campus observers believe there is little chance that a white student would apply for admission...

...4 Segregated dormitory facilities are likewise an established fact at the University of Notre Dame...

...To the extent that civil rights law violations were to trigger the sanction of the cutting-off of federal funding, Columbia's future could become precarious...

...At Princeton recently, "one admissions officer stated that every academically qualified black applicant for the class of 1975 was admitted - only about one out of every four such qualified white applicants was so lucky...

...7As early as 1968 it had been decided at Northwestern University that "separate sections of existing housing units" would be "reserved for black students...

...Penn so carefully chose its words as to have endorsed a study and residence program "in terms that could result in its being all black in fact" even while "whites are not formally excluded...

...Would many decent persons remain complacent were it an open secret that such a white, Anglo-Saxon orientation had deliberately been chosen to avoid the presence of Afro-Americans...

...Some minority students were admitted whose college grades and aptitude test scores were so low that had they been whites their applications would have been summarily denied...

...Experience in the South shows that a case-by-case attack on segregation based on a Supreme Court ruling (e.g...

...11 "an interview black concentration" Scholastic (Notre Dame, Ind.: November 19, 1971), p. 23...

...Apparently mindful of Washington's power, the University of Pennsylvania in April, 1972 replied to a black student proposal for a segregated on-campus living and counseling project with an artfully phrased approval...

...The Court might (with at least some consistency) hold that this would impair and inhibit the students' ability to engage in discussions and exchange views with not just one person, but with the whole majority...

...Educators could attempt to frame a coherent policy concerning what, if any, segregation will be nourished in their universities, and what methods could be implemented to circumvent civil rights laws...

...9The black-only lounge at Columbia is one "which, the blacks claimed, was necessary in view of 'the racist nature of the American society...

...17 Ridgeway, The Closed Corporation, p. 224...

...3Even were it to affect admissions polices alone, DeFunis v. Odegaard would hence seem to be of immediate interest to scholars and to campus administrators...

...The universities probably have little to fear from private individuals desiring integration...

...1971), p. 1234...

...12 Frederick K. Lowell, "Segregation Comes to Columbia" National Review (November 5, 1971), p. 1236...

...It is now whites who are left with the sole "option" of non-usage of the accommodations in question...

...The more fashionable schools have been so engaged: e.g., Cornell, Columbia, Northwestern, and Notre Dame...

...An official from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare has said that if the black lounge is found to be segregated, and if the issue is not resolved, Columbia will have violated the civil rights laws and could risk losing federal funds...

...12By November, 1971 Columbia's "failure to draft an acceptable equal-employment plan" led the U.S...

...The ideal of one homogeneous community is not an inappropriate ideal, but it is more or less a fantasy...

...13Such federal intervention regarding discrimination in accommodations is not inconceivable...

...This is because the blacks in question enjoy the options of either using or not using these segregated facilities, whereas in the deep South blacks had only the solitary "option" of non-usage...

...office...

...on De-Funis) is exhausting, if not impossible...

...Society separates itself in ethnic groups...

...Indeed, separate-but-equal projects receiving federal financial help are vulnerable to the teeth of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which orders that: "No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance...

...It is not surprising that the Court forbade this non-academic discrimination due to its outcome...

...8 R. M. Barlow, S.J., "What Happened at Northwestern...

...recently the Carnegie Commission suggested that federal contract funding be increased by 1978 to thirteen billion dollars if universities are to meet their educational objectives...

...In fact, it has been observed that "Columbia's policy of selective apartheid could create legal problems for the University...

...America (May 18, 1968), p. 674...

...Universities should show what the society in general is showing to everyone else who is not a member of that society...

...The case was argued on May 15, 1972, and according to Assistant Deputy-Clerk Shriver in Olympia, the justices are still deliberating...

...An October 18, 1971 court decision on appeal during 1972, DeFunis v. Odegaard, is one which may prove to have a measurable impact upon higher education...

...The community here says we should all live together...

...Special-standard admissions policies, unilateral housing segregation, . and similar approaches may arguably be defensible in some contexts...

...Such restrictions impair and inhibit his ability to study, to engage in discussions and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession...

...7 "The Agony of Cornell" Time (May 2, 1969), p. 37...