California State University changed a program open only to men of color to now be open to all students, following a complaint filed with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.
“Cal State, like most universities, has very large bureaucracies dedicated to the prevention and treatment of discrimination,” Cornell professor William Jacobson And founder Equality Protection Projecthe told Fox News Digital. “So how does the university operate as a system in open discrimination?”
The complaint, filed on November 19, 2024, by Jacobson and the Equal Protection Project, claimed that 23 California State University campuses operate “Young males from a colorful consortium“
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According to the Consortium's website, it is founded on “creating systemic changes in higher education and improving outcomes for Black, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander, and Native American males.”
“Because discrimination…is presumptively illegal, and since CSU cannot show any compelling government justification for it, the CSU system’s exclusions based on race, skin color, national origin, and sex violate federal civil rights laws and constitutional protections,” the complaint from the EPP reads.
“The Cal State system at the highest level needs to look into how this happened to make sure it doesn't happen again,” Jacobson said. “It shouldn't take a group like mine, a small non-profit like mine, to take this kind of issue to attention and solve it. This is something they should have self-policed. But they don't seem to have done that.”
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A January 15, 2025 closure letter from the Office for Civil Rights says CSU cannot lawfully discriminate based on sex under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
California State University campuses have seen a number of anti-Israel protests over the past few years. ((Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images))
Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex or gender for entities that receive federal funding. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin for any activity or program that receives federal funding.
The complaint alleges that at least eight of the 23 programs violated Title VI and Title IX, such as Cal Poly San Luis Obispo's “Success to Success Initiative.” The initiative was only open to students who identify as men of color.
In the closing letter, the Office for Civil Rights said CSU had changed the union to be open to all students.
“OCR has confirmed that since you filed your complaint, the University has made changes to the Consortium and its programs/initiatives so that they are open to any student without regard to race, color, national origin, and gender.” “Because OCR has obtained credible information indicating that the allegations are being resolved, the facts underlying these allegations no longer exist, and OCR has no evidence that the law is being violated.”
The California State University system did not respond to a request for comment.
However, Jacobson told Fox News Digital that it remains to be seen if the issue has been resolved.
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“When a school changes the language for a program and opens it up to everyone, are they really doing that,” Jacobson said. “Is this what they practice? Is this what they do when they think no one's watching? And that's a big concern because one of the problems we have is we often feel like we're playing Whac-A-SLE. We drop this show and have them open it and another one shows up somewhere else in Another place and you deal with that and then another one appears somewhere else.”
Graduates participate in the commencement ceremony for the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, California State University at Angel Stadium in Anaheim on Monday, May 15, 2023. (Murray/Medianews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images)
He added that the public plays an important role in oversight and accountability.
“We need people to be vigilant because you can't accept at face value that a school says, 'We're not going to do it anymore,' and just assume they're not going to do it anymore,” he said. “That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to teach universities not to do that and we hope they won't. But we rely on the public to alert us if they do not meet their obligations.”
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