North Central University, a Christian university in Minnesota, recently made slight modifications to its “George Floyd Memorial Scholarship,” initially exclusive to black students, following a federal civil rights complaint. However, these adjustments have not fully resolved the legal issues, and the scholarship’s revised criteria still appear to dissuade non-black students from applying.
NCU, along with at least 24 other schools, cumulatively distribute over $800,000 annually in honor of George Floyd, as revealed by a Young America’s Foundation investigation in February. At NCU, the scholarship provides recipients with a full-tuition award valued at nearly $450,000 over the course of four years.
(Young America’s Foundation, 2024)
In addition to NCU, ten other colleges and universities explicitly state that their scholarships are exclusively for black students. Other institutions require that recipients demonstrate community leadership.
The rationale behind awarding scholarships in the name of a man who, rather than being a “community leader,” once held a gun to a pregnant woman’s abdomen is highly questionable, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion. College is expensive, and students should be allowed to apply for assistance to defray the cost regardless of their skin color.
Cornell Professor William Jacobson filed a federal civil rights complaint over the discriminatory racial requirement in March; and last week, the College Fix submitted an inquiry to NCU, prompting the university to remove some wording about race.
Regardless, the application form still requires students to select that they “identify as being a student of African descent (Black, African American, African, or Mixed),” and pages advertising the scholarship seem to heavily imply that the racial requirement remains.
According to the Fix, Professor Jacobson is following up on his federal complaint and intends to continue monitoring the situation until a satisfactory resolution is reached.
