“A civil rights complaint has been filed against Gettysburg College for its apparent policy to seek to enroll ‘20% domestic students of color’ as an alleged violation of federal anti-discrimination laws and the Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in admissions,” reports The College Fix.
The complaint was filed earlier this month with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights by the conservative Young America’s Foundation.
“Racial quotas are the most basic and obvious deviation from a colorblind admissions process one could imagine,” the complaint declares, citing the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which emphasized that a university cannot employ a quota system “with a specific number of seats reserved for individuals from a preferred ethnic group.”
“To show proof of the policy, the complaint cites a March 31 presentation to the student government during which Senior Assistant Director of Admissions Luke Frigon shared admission goals for the upcoming fall semester. The goals included admitting ‘20% domestic students of color,'” as made clear in slides in the presentation.
Last month, Young America’s Foundation filed an earlier complaint alleging that Gettysburg’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The more recent complaint about Gettysburg’s racial admission policy was an addendum to that earlier complaint. YAF says the admissions policy “appears to be a continuation of a long-held policy, as Gettysburg publicly boasts its ‘Enrollment of…students of color’ on its website.”
The earlier OCR complaint submitted last month by YAF argues its student members “face significant discrimination on campus, where extremist administrators and faculty use so-called and often self-appointed authority to block conservative speech.”
It is not clear whether such censorship violates any law. The First Amendment itself does not apply to private colleges like Gettysburg College, although Pennsylvania state law might limit certain restrictions on speech even by private institutions.
