Three UR scholarships under fire in federal civil rights complaint

Certain scholarships could be headed toward heightened scrutiny from federal officials after a civil rights complaint was filed against the University of Richmond on Friday, Aug. 22.

The Equal Protection Project, the group that filed the complaint, alleges that three UR scholarships — the VSCPA scholarship, Business Partnership Scholarship and Law Women’s Centennial Scholarship — violate federal law. The group alleged that the first two scholarships, both offered by the business school, are in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. They also argued that the law school women's scholarship conflicts with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. 

“Creating educational opportunities based on race, color, national origin, or sex violates Titles VI and IX of the Civil Rights Act, as well as state law,” said William A. Jacobson, founder of the Equal Protection Project. “Such scholarships also violate URichmond 's own non-discrimination policies.”

The complaint, however, is less straightforward.

The VSCPA scholarship is not offered directly by the university. Rather, it’s an external organization, the Virginia Society of CPAs, that gives scholarships to Virginia students who wish to become certified public accountants.

The UR accounting department’s only involvement is to forward a memo of the scholarship to accounting majors, according to Valaria P. Vendrzyk, chair of the UR accounting department. The VSCPA selects all student recipients of the scholarship.

According to the Equal Protection Project complaint, “URichmond promotes the discriminatory scholarship to URichmond Students on URichmond’s scholarship page.”

The scholarship is listed as an accounting scholarship on a Robins School of Business webpage. The website states that the scholarship is “available to a minority student with need, GPA of 3.0 or higher, and a positive faculty recommendation.”

In June, the VSCPA did not announce any scholarship recipients from UR for 2025. Additionally, the organization does not outline any criteria related to race or minority status for selection on its website. 

The Law Women’s Centennial Scholarship is a new scholarship made to honor the first woman graduate of the law school, Jane Brown Ranson L’1923. According to UR Senior Director of Media Relations & Strategic Communications Sunni Brown, recipients of this scholarship are not limited by gender. 

The EPP argues that the scholarship is framed as a women’s scholarship, even if it is not formally so. 

“The promotional language clearly signaling that the scholarship is intended for women, would dissuade males from applying or URichmond from seriously considering men,” the complaint reads.

The complaint’s clearest objection is to the Business Partnerships Scholarship. The scholarship is listed on the business school’s website for a “minority from Richmond area” and giving “preference to minority Virginian” applicants.

The EPP argues that this violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “by excluding students based on their race, color or national origin.”

The case comes amid major shifts in higher education policy. In summer 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority effectively gutted affirmative action programs in colleges across the country. Now, activists with the EPP are citing the court case as a reason to investigate UR. 

The organization cited the case, writing that the “guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color. If both are not accorded the same protection, then it is not equal.”

The EPP has filed hundreds of complaints against institutions that it claims violate federal law by using identities such as race and gender in scholarships and other academic programs. 

“Regardless of URichmond’s reasons for offering, promoting, and administering such discriminatory scholarships and programs,” the complaint reads. “URichmond is violating Title VI by doing so.”

As of now, an investigation has not been publicly opened against the University of Richmond, according to the Department of Education website. According to Brown, the university is aware of the complaint but has not received any outreach from the Department of Education. 

Should the department reach out to the university, the legal team would review it and respond, according to Brown. Without this outreach, it is currently unclear whether the university will make changes to these scholarships. 

Contact editor-in-chief Nick Mossman at nick.mossman@richmond.edu