Texas Tech Student Announces 'United White Persons College Fund'

[CrimsonTide4]

Texas Tech Student Announces 'United White Persons College Fund'

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG


Matthew Coday wants to be sued, or at least to provoke debate on his campus about racial preferences at colleges. The Texas Tech senior loudly announced this month a new scholarship, which he is calling "The United White Persons College Fund."


Mr. Coday, who is white, said his effort, which he said would give a $2,000 scholarship to one student each year, is a jab at the United Negro College Fund, which he argued discriminates against white students.

Though he acknowledged that the UNCF does not exclude members of any group from its scholarships, he said that in practice the group is exclusive, since it supports historically black colleges. (While all of the private colleges that are members of UNCF are historically black, none bar white students and many have some white students enrolled.)


Mr. Coday plans to mirror his scholarship program on the policies of the United Negro College Fund's programs: He said that no student would be excluded based on race, but that his mission was to support members of a certain group -- in this case, white students.


"If you can have an organization that can serve to better your racial group," he said, "then so can we."


"I would just dare anyone to take me to court and try to have our organization declared discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional," he said. Such a finding, he said, would call into question the legality of other groups as well. "I would love to see organizations like the United Negro College Fund disbanded."


Mr. Coday said he has raised more than $1,000 so far for his scholarship fund, mainly from friends, relatives, and others who have heard of his efforts in recent local news reports. He said he hopes to raise at least $50,000 by this fall, when the first scholarship will be awarded. "There were a lot of scholarships I didn't qualify for because I wasn't Hispanic or because I wasn't black," he added.


He said he will refuse to take any money from white supremacist groups, and that he does not consider himself a racist.


"That's like saying, Isn't the United Negro College Fund black
supremacist?" he said.


So far, Mr. Coday said, his efforts have not sparked much debate on the campus. "I expect the black student organizations to march against me," he said, "There's a firestorm that's about to erupt."


The president of the Black Student Association on the campus, Martin Lee Dorsey II, said his group has not yet had time to decide whether and how to respond to the new fund, though the group will discuss a possible response at a meeting next week.


But Mr. Dorsey finds the spirit of the scholarship troubling.


"There are 21,000 white students here and only 818 black students," he said. "He's being discriminated against? I don't think so. I mean, come on."


"You can get scholarships for just about anything these days," added Mr. Dorsey. "I don't think the United Negro College Fund is a discriminatory scholarship. ... He's just trying to do this trying to get attention."


Leaders of the United Negro College Fund could not be reached for comment Tuesday.