Who defines 'Minority'?
Student booted from workshop, sues VCU
Ryan Farr
Issue date: 9/28/06 Section: News
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Since 1984, VCU's School of Mass Communications has held the Urban Journalism Workshop each summer for minority high school students interested in journalism as a career. The program accepted 15-year-old Monacan High School student Smith, who was then denied entry after she revealed on the phone she was white.
During the two-week workshop, students learn the basics of putting together a newspaper, such as reporting and layout, to produce their own 16-page paper in the process. While staying in VCU's dorms overnight, participants work with Richmond Times-Dispatch reporters and editors during the day, obtaining journalistic experience they might not otherwise get.
"At my high school there wasn't any school paper," said Julian Benbow, a former UJW participant who went on to work for The Commonwealth Times, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and now the Boston Globe.
"The workshop taught me how to put things together, how to dig for information," he said. "I wouldn't trade it for the world."
Benbow said he might never have gotten into journalism if it were not for the workshop.
Benbow, who is black, made it into the program. Smith, a female, did not. While both blacks and females are often considered minorities in the newsroom, UJW defines the category by race and ethnicity.
The Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Inc., a workshop sponsor, finances the VCU workshop and 25 similar workshops across the country as of 2005. As a condition for funding the programs, Dow Jones requires that everyone admitted must be a minority student. They classify minorities by racial or ethnic groups-black, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaskan Native.
"This program is blatantly unconstitutional," said Center for Individual Rights President Terence Pell, who is also defending Smith in the case.
After the Smiths came to them for help in April, CIR filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Richmond on their behalf. Among the named defendants are workshop sponsors VCU, Dow Jones and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. School of Mass Communications professors June Nicholson and Bonnie Davis, the director and co-director of the program, respectively, are also targets of the lawsuit. Robert Holsworth, dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences is also included.
