Posted on 02/15/2004 12:23:00 PM PST by jamesRI1776
Club offers whites-only scholarship
The College Republicans group at Roger Williams University says its $50 scholarship is making a statement against affirmative action.
01:00 AM EST on Sunday, February 15, 2004 BY ALEX KUFFNER, Journal Staff Writer
BRISTOL -- The application for the scholarship being offered at Roger Williams University reads like no other.
To be sure, it asks for all the standard information -- the applicant's name, age, year of graduation, grade-point average and a list of accomplishments and accolades -- but the topic of the essay sets it apart.
" In 100 words or less," it says, "write why you are proud of your white heritage and explain what being white means to you. " Must attach recent picture to confirm whiteness," it adds. "Evidence of bleaching will disqualify applicants."
It may sound like a bad joke, but the White Scholarship Award, a $50 grant for a "student of non-color," is real, and Jason Mattera, the 20-year-old junior from Brooklyn, N.Y., who is behind it, says it's more than a publicity stunt for the College Republicans, a group that has gained notoriety on campus with its aggressive brand of conservatism.
As Mattera sees it, by offering the token scholarship, the student group is at once parodying minority scholarships at Roger Williams and making a broader statement against affirmative action.
" White kids are at a handicap," says Mattera, the president of the group. "Handing out scholarships based on someone's color is absurd."
How the Republicans' initiative has been received has had as much to do with its tone as its substance.
" I think they should engage the issues in a more academic manner," said June Speakman, an associate professor of political science and the group's faculty adviser. "We do need a discussion on whether race-based scholarships are a good policy or a bad policy. I just don't agree with their tactics."
CONSERVATIVE student groups across the country have taken a similarly combative approach to advance their arguments at universities they believe are dominated by liberals.
In Texas, California and Washington state, students have held "affirmative action bake sales," where brownies or cookies were offered at different prices to different races. Lawsuits in other parts of the country have sought to overturn diversity policies and student codes of conduct.
But Speakman says the white scholarship could be the first of its kind. Typical of the College Republicans' past actions, the white scholarship has angered some people at the university.
After the Republicans handed out fliers on campus advertising the scholarship two weeks ago, members of the Student Senate questioned whether they had violated the university's Student Equality Act.
The act is a nondiscrimination policy that requires all campus clubs and organizations to treat all students equally without regard to race, gender or sexual orientation. If the College Republicans group is found to have violated the act, it could be fined or have its charter revoked.
" I understand that satire is one of their central tenets," said Erin Bedell, president of the Student Senate. "Personally, I think [the scholarship] needs to be evaluated."
The Student Senate has yet to make a decision.
The Faculty Senate also took up the issue during a meeting Feb. 4 but tabled it for further discussion.
The College Republicans are pushing forward despite the fuss. " They wouldn't be so stupid to mess with us," Mattera said. "We'll give out the scholarship no matter what they say."
The group took out a full-page ad in last week's issue of The Hawk's Herald, the university's student newspaper. It advertises the scholarship and the visit on Wednesday of Reginald Jones, a critic of affirmative action who calls himself "the nuclear reaction to Jesse Jackson."
It's clear that the Republicans are delighted by the attention. A headline in a press release issued by the group last week said: "1st Annual Whites-Only Scholarship Ignites Controversy."
THE GROUP is certainly no stranger to trouble.
The university administration temporarily froze the College Republicans' money in the fall during a fight over a series of articles published in its monthly newsletter, The Hawk's Right Eye. In the past year, the newsletter has published stories attacking Democrats, Muslims and, recently, Kwanzaa.
The articles in the September issue accused homosexuals of squelching free speech by pushing for hate-crimes legislation and alleged that a well-known gay-rights group indoctrinates students into homosexual sex.
The issue also included an article from the WorldNetDaily Web site that describes the violent rape of a young man by an older man.
University President Roy J. Nirschel called the issue "pornographic in nature, puerile" and "mean-spirited" and said the university would "not condone publications that create a hostile environment for our students."
In the end, the matter became a question of free speech. No action was taken against the Republicans, and Mattera, the editor of the newsletter, landed on the cover of USA Today.
In regard to the scholarship, the university has chosen to stay out of the debate.
" It is not the typical place of a university to take an official stand on issues of public or campus debate, but rather to oversee that the arguments put forth by all constituencies are done so within university policies and in a nonviolent and nonthreatening manner," said Provost Edward J. Kavanagh. "All those members of the Roger Williams University campus have a voice that deserves to be heard should they choose to speak out."
" Further, the initiative is an independent action by a student organization and is not endorsed by Roger Williams University." SOME SAY the College Republicans group has been disingenuous in making its stand against minority scholarships.
Speakman and others at the university have pointed out that Mattera himself is the recipient of a scholarship open only to a minority group. Mattera, who is of Puerto Rican descent, readily admits that he was awarded a $5,000 scholarship from the Hispanic College Fund. He also receives an annual scholarship of $8,000 from Roger Williams. He says he was given the money because of his academic achievement -- adding that he has a 3.9 grade-point average -- and plays down the role his ethnicity played in the scholarships being awarded.
And Mattera contends that his ethnic background only strengthens his position.
" No matter what my ethnicity is, I'm making a statement that scholarships should be given out based on merit and need," says Mattera, whose group also includes a Cuban and a Guatemalan. He says they support the white scholarship.
Roger Williams offers a handful of minority scholarships. They are paid for by either private foundations or families. The vast majority of the university's scholarships are open to all students, regardless of race, and many benefit from them.
According to Lynn Fawthrop, the university's vice president for enrollment management, a third of the university's 3,400 students receive annual scholarships of between $4,000 and $15,000.
THE COLLEGE REPUBLICANS thought up the white scholarship last spring when the university's Intercultural Center sent out a list of scholarships available to minorities.
Group members donated their personal money for the scholarship, and they waited until Jones' visit to offer it.
He was invited, the Republicans say, in observance of Black History Month. A poster announcing his visit says that "Black History Month is a ploy to spread socialism."
The topic of his lecture Wednesday evening? "How the civil-rights movement destroyed the black community."
Mattera says he has received several scholarship applications. Jones will announce the recipient of the scholarship before his talk.
Check out the breaking news at our website.
We are getting quite a response!
Confronting hypocrites with their hypocrisy is a very embarrassing tactic.
For the hypocrites.
... The Faculty Senate also took up the issue during a meeting Feb. 4 but tabled it for further discussion."
Hilarious. You must have really thrown that monkeywrench into the spinning gears if the various powers at Roger Williams U are at a loss of 'what to do' about you yet.
Well, yes. So much the more compelling that he's not a white kid himself.
(Though I've never really understood why hispanic isn't white).
(In fact, I've never really understood what hispanic means, apart from not-entirely-european-spanish-speaker, which seems too broad to be particularly useful).
As a white boy supporting a family of three, and attending grad school full time, I was much too priviledged to get any help. But I made it.
"and said the university would "not condone publications that create a hostile environment for our liberal students."
Mattera himself is the recipient of a scholarship open only to a minority group.
Some people think that should oblige him to keep silent about the fairness of it.
Here are Thomas Sowell's thoughts about that:
From:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20031001.shtml
"One of the silly things that gets said repeatedly is that I should not be against affirmative action because I have myself benefited from it. Think about it: I am 73 years old. There was no affirmative action when I went to college -- or to graduate school, for that matter. There wasn't even a Civil Rights Act of 1964 when I began my academic career in 1962. Moreover, there is nothing that I have accomplished in my education or my career that wasn't accomplished by other blacks before me -- and long before affirmative action. Getting a degree from Harvard? The first black man graduated from Harvard in 1870. Becoming a black economist? There was a black professor of economics at the University of Chicago when I first arrived there as a graduate student. Writing a newspaper column? George Schuyler wrote newspaper columns, magazine articles, and books before I was born. A recent silly e-mail declared that I wouldn't even be able to vote in this year's California election if there hadn't been a Voting Rights Act of 1965. I have been voting ever since I was 21 years old -- in 1951. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were necessary for some people in some places. But making these things the cause of the rise of most blacks only betrays an ignorance of history. The most dramatic rise of blacks out of poverty occurred before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. That's right -- before. But politicians, activists and the intelligentsia have spread so much propaganda that many Americans, black and white, are unaware of the facts. There is a lot of political mileage to be gotten by convincing blacks that they owe everything to the government and could not make it in this world otherwise. Dependency plus paranoia equals votes. But blacks made it in this world before the government paid them any attention. Nor has the economic rise of blacks been speeded up by civil rights legislation. More blacks rose into professional ranks in the five years preceding passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than in the five years after its passage. What moved blacks up was a rapid increase in education. There was certainly discrimination but, in many fields that demanded higher levels of education, there were not that many blacks to discriminate against in the first place. Moreover, even if certain laws and policies may once have served a purpose, that does not mean that these laws and policies should last forever, in total disregard of their counterproductive effects today. For a California election in 2003 to be held up by the federal government because of what happened in Mississippi decades ago is ludicrous. Finally, the argument that anyone who has benefited from affirmative action should never oppose it is as illogical as it is ignorant of the facts. I certainly benefited from the Korean War, which led to my being in the military and therefore getting the G.I. Bill that enabled me to go to college. Does that mean that I should never be against any war? Was it wrong of me to be against the Vietnam War after I had personally benefited from the Korean War? Are the duties of a citizen, not to mention the duty to be honest and truthful, to be over-ridden by what happened to benefit me personally? Some of the things I advocate would ruin me personally if my recommendations were followed. For example, I am totally opposed to the environmentalist extremism that has made it an ordeal to try to build any kind of housing -- much less "affordable housing" -- on the San Francisco peninsula. But if such restrictive policies were repealed, the inflated value of my home would be cut at least in half. Is myopic selfishness supposed to be a moral obligation?"
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