UT Martin chooses to comply as the unprecedented “Dear Colleague” letter takes effect on institutions across the United States.
On February 14, the United States Department of Education sent out the “Dear Colleague” letter which ordered universities to ensure their policies and actions comply with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard, which held that the use of racial preferences in college admissions is unlawful. The “Dear Colleague” letter applied the Harvard decision more broadly to cease all efforts to use race, or non-racial information as a proxy for race, in “[university] decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life”.
Failure of schools to comply with the Dear Colleague guidance by February 28th could result in loss of federal funding for schools. This is in accordance with Title IV, which is a status accredited to schools by the Department of Education that allows them to participate in federal student aid programs.
Faced with the ruling, the UT system, along with UT Martin Chancellor Yancy Freeman and his staff, has been tasked with determining what university programs or initiatives need to be changed and what can remain the same based on the wording and direction of the “Dear Colleague” letter.
In other states such as Washington or New York, state officials have urged schools to refrain from making changes based on the fact that the federal law remains unaffected by the order.
According to a February 27th article from AP, “Leaders of some colleges shrugged the memo off entirely. Antioch University’s chief said ‘most of higher education’ won’t comply with the memo unless federal law is changed. Western Michigan University’s president told his campus to ‘please proceed as usual.’”
However, the UT system and UT Martin Chancellor Yancy Freeman are taking a close look at certain programs and activities to see how they may be impacted by the letter as worded.
“We are trying to make adjustments based on the best information that we can—that will have the least amount of impact on students, your educational experience and your ability to learn,” said Chancellor Freeman, “What that looks like, I don’t know [if] I have all of the answers yet, but we are examining what that looks like and what will have to change.”
The letter itself states clearly, “treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.”
This statement will have an impact on many different programs and initiatives around the country with most people’s focus shifting towards admissions in educational institutions across the country. This is something that will remain unaffected at UT Martin going forward due to the absence of race-based admissions in the UT system.
Prior to 2006, the UT system would offer race-based scholarships due to the Geier Consent Decree, but this ruling would be affected later by the Harvard case, which held that the use of racial preferences in college admissions is unlawful, and expanded on by the Tennessee Attorney General to include scholarship and financial aid programs. Thus, UT Martin has been aligned with the admission, scholarship and financial aid parameters offered by the “Dear Colleague” letter since 2023.
Another area that will remain unaffected is academic programs and minors. Freeman mentions that there has been no notion at any point that academic programs like African American studies majors or minors will be impacted by this order.
As long as these courses are taught in a historical context to all students equally, without making students uncomfortable in a way that might make them feel as if they are to blame for certain aspects of history.
Research grants that allow students and faculty to study topics in their field for the state or country were also impacted recently as a result of an Executive Order issued by President Trump to freeze spending until an alignment decision could be made. These are programs that students directly engage and participate in that allow them to take part in a major or program that they might’ve missed out on otherwise.
“If it’s a grant funded project that they have been doing and now that grant has gone away, those folks still have to have a job, right?” said Freeman on the importance of keeping student and faculty positions intact despite the possible loss of funding, “…for a student who’s funding school based on participating in a grant opportunity, what now happens to the funds for that student? Do you drop them and say, ‘So sorry, you no longer have a way to be able to do this.’…it’s still an issue.”
Another object of the school’s focus will be on events such as the Civil Rights Conference. The conference, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary at UTM, is a program that will get the schools’ full attention to determine if it should continue based on the order. The Civil Rights Conference is open to participants in all races.
A more extreme solution to the regulations set by the “Dear Colleague” letter would be cutting programs entirely that don’t adhere to the parameters set by the letter. According to Chancellor Freeman, no programs or grants have been cut so far, but they are unable to rule out that possibility in the future.
“We’ve not at this point made any decision that we’re going to cut a program and or take dollars from something else to feed it over to a program to fill a gap that’s there…,” Freeman continues on whether the school would ever have to cut programs, “I don’t know…we would be more likely to cut something that goes against what the guidance tells us that we have to do and realign funds that are going there into something that is not against the guidance.”
Currently, UT Martin is working toward compliance with the “Dear Colleague” letter and will do so in accordance with federal law, statute, policy and federal or state government.
“We want to continue to support the work that’s being done, [it’s] valuable work that’s happening across this campus, and we want to do everything we can to protect the work that [students] are doing,” said Freeman on his message to students and faculty through this process, “I know that folks are really concerned about it, and so we’re just taking it one day at a time, one decision at a time, trying to make sure that we’re covering everything that we need to while also trying to provide some assurances for people that it’s going to be okay.”
