The University of South Carolina (USC) planned to host a program open only to students of certain race and ethnicities, but after a professor filed a complaint alleging it was a violation of federal civil rights law, he said the application was opened to everyone.

The Business Success Academy application through USC’s Darla Moore School of Business was originally only open to applicants who “identify as African American or Black, Hispanic, LatinX, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, or Two or More Races,” Mark Perry, a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. But after Perry filed a Title VI complaint and shared it with the university, the application was changed, he told TheDCNF.

As of Friday, the application states the program is “Open to all Rising High School Juniors and Seniors in South Carolina,” but highlighted students “who are in support of the advancement of business students from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds are strongly encouraged to apply.”

Perry called it “inexcusable” for USC “to so blatantly violate such a clear civil rights law” through a program that would have been “exclusionary and inequitable.” Even though the university changed the way it worded eligibility, “it sounds like they still are going to have this preference for non-white students, but at least they are pretending now that it’s going to be open to all students, regardless of color,” he added.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 says that no person in the U.S. should be discriminated against, under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance on the basis of race, color or national origin. As of May 20, Perry said he has filed 471 Title IX and Title VI complaints, which have resulted in 247 federal investigations and 154 resolutions that he said have almost all been ruled in his favor.

Courtesy of Mark Perry

In his experience filing similar complaints, Perry said university “diversicrats” come up with ideas that they believe sound good and further their goals of social justice, racial justice, diversity, equity and inclusion, even though they often violate federal civil rights laws and discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color or national origin.

“They’re so corrupt and they’re so unprincipled, that they do this all the time,” Perry told TheDCNF. “They might not even realize they’re violating federal civil rights laws or they know that it’s illegal, but they do it anyway because they’ve done it in the past (and) they’ve always gotten away with it because no one has ever challenged them.”

Perry said the “gold standard” would be for all programs to be open to everybody, regardless of race, sex, gender identity or any other restrictions or preferences. He said the Biden administration’s decision to expand the definition of sex to include gender identity actually helps him prove many of his cases.

“They’ve expanded Title IX to protect from discrimination on the basis of not just sex, but gender identity and sexual expression,” Perry said. “Except that then you can’t have scholarships for LGBTQ students anymore, because those would be discriminatory on the basis of sexual orientation and you can’t just have female only programs, because then you’re discriminating on the basis of both sex and gender identity.”

The University of South Carolina did not respond to TheDCNF’s request for comment.

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