Virginia Tech's Board of Visitors, in a single resolution, unanimously struck down the school's affirmative action programs and deleted all references to sexual orientation in its non-discrimination policy at a meeting Monday night.
Virginia Tech Board members made the decision to end affirmative action based on race and gender in response to April and Nov. 2002 memos from the office of Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore. The November memo warned that Board members might "face personal legal liability if they allowed actions that did not meet a strict legal test," said Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger in a letter addressed to the school's community.
Kilgore "offered the advice that state colleges could no longer legally justify giving minorities preference for admission, because Virginia has already eliminated the last vestiges of segregation in higher education," Kilgore spokesperson Carrie Cantrell said. "Basically, the state can no longer allow affirmative action programs to remedy past discrimination."
Because the initial April memo on affirmative action was legal advice and not an official opinion, the Virginia attorney general's office has no requirement to publicly release it, Cantrell said.
However, Larry Hincker, associate vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech, said the attorney general's recommendation directly led to the Board's move on Monday.
"The memo set in motion a string of events," Hincker said. "Ultimately it led to this."
Ending affirmative action will devastate attempts to improve diversity at Virginia's largest public university, said Sterling Daniel, Virginia Tech student government association president.
"We are already a school that has a low public image as far as that goes, and this would just make us look even worse," Daniel said.
Virginia Tech University Rector John G. Rocovich did not accept calls from The Cavalier Daily yesterday.
Hincker acknowledged that the university expected criticism for the move, but was simply attempting to adhere to state policy.
"The university is still firmly committed to diversity and to providing opportunity to those who might not otherwise have it," Hincker said. "We know those with a strict constructionist view will challenge this, but this is how the Board has ruled."
Both policy changes will create an intolerant and intimidating atmosphere at Virginia Tech, said Susan Gooden, president of the black caucus of Virginia Tech.
"It sends a very negative message that Virginia Tech is an unwelcoming community for minority students, women and for people of different sexual orientations," Gooden said. "This will have a very, very strong chilling effect."
Virginia Tech's student newspaper, The Collegiate Times, reported yesterday that the Board also omitted sexual orientation from the school's non-discrimination policy to put the university in line with state and federal law.
Though sexual-orientation minority groups are not protected under Virginia anti-discrimination law, Virginia Tech had no legal requirement to remove the wording that protected them in its institutional policy, Cantrell said.
"State law does not affect [Board] policy judgements at state schools," Cantrell added.
Virginia Tech student government leaders have spoken with legal counsel and are intent on pursuing a lawsuit against the Board to have sexual orientation reinstated in the policy, Daniel said.
"The danger will be that immediately it gives the university the ability to discriminate against those who don't share the same sexual orientation that the university feels is correct," Daniel said. "That becomes our concern, because the SGA has the responsibility to present and protect the interests of all students."
Neither the elimination of affirmative action nor the sexual orientation clause were publicly discussed at Monday's Board meeting, said Edd Sewell, a non-voting faculty representative to the Board.
The only part of the resolution involving the termination of affirmative action and the restrictions on non-discrimination policy read at the meeting was a section commending Virginia Tech's president, senior administrators and legal counsel for reviewing and articulating the university's policy on non-discrimination, Sewell said.
"There was no attempt at debate, at least in the public meeting -- it was moved, seconded and voted on," he said. "As we left the meeting, we did not know the content of the resolution -- no one except the voting board members did."
Students are planning a forum to discuss the implications of the resolution next week, and some faculty members are preparing to protest, Daniel said.
U.Va. will not follow in the footsteps of the Virginia Tech Board, in regard to sexual orientation or affirmative action, said Karen Holt, director of the office of equal opportunity programs.
The University does have a sexual orientation clause in its non-discrimination policy and practices affirmative action for minorities in the undergraduate admissions process, according to University spokeswoman Carol Wood.
Two days after the passing of the resolution, confusion and anxiety reign supreme at Virginia Tech, Sewell said.
"I think we really don't just have a good sense of what is happening," he said. "I ask you what kind of effect these changes would have on the University of Virginia?"
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