Handbook for Students, Trustees:
Does Your School Practice Racial Preferences?

Guilty by Admission: Nearly every elite college in America violates the law. Does Yours?

(As of Jan. 27, 1999, the Center for Individual Rights is running an advertisement in college papers across the country which features this, or similar, text regarding college and university use of racial quotas and preferences.  Adversity.Net supports CIR's campaign without reservation.)  [Download the handbook]

(Center for Individual Rights):   Using racial preferences to achieve a particular racial mix of students has been illegal for at least the last twenty years. Yet many schools persist in treating applicants differently by race in order to achieve racial diversity.

          CIR has prepared two handbooks which are available free of charge -- one for college students and the other for college trustees. Each handbook explains the law in everyday terms and suggests ways to reform unlawful admissions practices.

DOWNLOAD or VIEW the Handbooks:

• CIR site:  Download or View the Handbook for Students (in Acrobat PDF format)
• CIR site:  Download or View the Handbook for Trustees (in Acrobat PDF format)
• Visit the CIR Web Site for further information about the handbooks.

A Project of the:
Center for Individual Rights
1233 20th St, N.W. Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20036
Telephone: (202) 833-8400 Fax: (202) 833-8410

Additional Links and Stories:

Conservatives open drive against affirmative action (01/25/99 - dead)
          "On 15 campuses across the country, students will open their college newspapers Tuesday to a full-page advertisement with the headline 'Guilty by Admission' and, in bold print, 'Nearly Every Elite College in America Violates the Law. Does Yours?' "

          "The student handbook includes sections on how to use freedom of information laws, what kinds of data to request from the university, what disparities to note and how to find a lawyer and bring a lawsuit.

          "The campaign, to be announced Tuesday at a Washington news conference featuring former Education Secretary William Bennett and the commentator Nat Hentoff, asserts that most colleges that engage in race-conscious admissions do so in a way that violates the law."  (Associated Press, via the Star Telegram, 01/25/99, by Ethan Bronner)
[former link *http://www.star-telegram.com:80/news/doc/1047/1:POLITICS23/1:POLITICS23012599.html]

Campus affirmative action embattled (01/27/99) (dead link)
          "The handbooks have all the subtlety of television ads for personal injury lawyers.  Every elite university in the nation violates federal law, they warn. Trustees, you may be personally responsible for a costly lawsuit. Students, your rights may have been - and probably were - breached.

          "They go on to offer help: how to find a lawyer, how to file a freedom of information act. They list the documents needed to win the court case, and prod, 'Be tenacious,' and always 'Appeal, appeal, appeal.'

          " 'Up until now, trustees and students have been told that the university complies with federal law, but the truth is, it probably doesn't,'  said Terence Pell, senior counsel for the Center for Individual Rights, which, with the privately funded Pope Institute for the Future of Higher Education, is sponsoring the campaign."  (Boston Globe, 01/27/99, by Kate Zernike)
[former link *http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/027/nation/Campus_affirmative_action_embattled+.shtml]

Campus affirmative action embattled  (01/27/99)
          "Conservatives who say top U.S. colleges are illegally using racial preferences in admissions are taking their case to the nation's college newspapers.  The newspaper ads by the Center for Individual Rights, a conservative law firm representing students suing universities, are headlined 'Guilty by Admission'  and charge that nearly every elite college in the United States violates the law.

          "The center issued two 30-page handbooks it says are intended to help students identify discrimination and to help institutions keep from getting sued, but critics say the handbooks are designed to incite lawsuits.

          "The ads and handbooks are part of a campaign to highlight the use of racial preferences in admissions, say conservatives, including former Education Secretary William Bennett, who called college diversity programs 'an antithesis of the civil rights movement.' "  (Associated Press, via Star Tribune, 1/27/99)
[link http://www2.startribune.com/cgi-bin/stOnLine/article?thisStory=70690543 ]

Group Publishes Guide to Help Colleges Avoid Lawsuits (Pay Site; 01/26/99)
          "To protect themselves and their universities from lawsuits, trustees should study federal-court decisions on affirmative action and end campus policies that use preferences to increase racial diversity, according to a trustee "handbook" being released today by a non-profit legal firm that has sued colleges over these policies. The manual -- as well as a companion text urging students to scrutinize campus policies and sue to reform them -- is the latest attempt by partisans in the affirmative-action debate to influence college officials on the future of race-based policies."  (PAY SITE: Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/26/99, by Patrick Healy)
[link to pay site: http://www.chronicle.com/daily/99/01/99012603n.htm ]

Cleveland Judge Holds College Administrators Liable for Reverse Discrimination!  (Jan. 1999 - dead link)
          "Judge David S. Perelman of the U.S. District Court in Cleveland, Ohio, has issued a warning to college and university administrators stubbornly holding on to affirmative-action policies: You are personally liable for damages if you are sued over the policies, because you should know by now the policies are unconstitutional.

          "[Judge] Perelman struck down Cuyahoga Community College District's affirmative-action policy as unconstitutional this fall, and in doing so he rejected the attempt by the president, two vice-presidents and nine trustees of the college to gain qualified immunity from damages. The college officials sought the immunity because, they said, under Ohio law they were obliged to institute a set-aside program benefiting minority business and because court decisions had left the constitutionality of such a program unclear.

          "Perelman, however, said the officials knew that the U.S. Supreme Court had already found, in several rulings, that such programs violated the 14th Amendment. Qualified immunity, he wrote, 'is not intended to allow individual officers to abdicate their decision-making obligations in blind reliance on state statutes.' "  (The Clarion, Jan. 1999)
[former link **http://www.popecenter.org/www/clarion/1999/January/0199bats.html]

[Download the handbook]

End "Handbook:   Student Reverse Discrimination"

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