When Matt Hyman begins his freshman year at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County this month, he will do so on a scholarship originally given only to black students.

The soft-spoken 17-year-old from Pikesville is one of seven white freshmen among the 53 students in UMBC's latest crop of Meyerhoff Scholars, a four-year grant program created a decade ago to redress a nationwide shortage of black scientists and engineers.

Maryland's colleges and universities were forced three years ago by the courts to stop awarding scholarships on the basis of race.

As a result, admissions officers at Maryland's public colleges and universities say they have a harder time attracting bright minority students.

However, the schools have managed to maintain -- and, in a few cases, increase -- the racial and ethnic variety of their students, largely through admissions practices that consider race and many other factors.

Now those practices also might be in jeopardy: Robert Farmer, a white Baltimore man, has sued the University of Maryland, claiming he was rejected by the medical school in favor of less-qualified blacks.

"A black or Hispanic with Rob's test scores would have had a red carpet and brass band welcoming him as he walked up the steps [to the school]," said Farmer's lawyer, John Montgomery of Arlington, Va. "They slammed him. They didn't even give him an interview."

The medical school case comes three years after a Latino freshman at the University of Maryland, College Park won his lawsuit contending he was illegally discriminated against by being barred from receiving a Benjamin Banneker Scholarship, a four-year, all-expenses grant awarded only to top black students.

The Supreme Court settled the issue in 1995 by letting stand an appeals court finding that such race-based grants were illegal. At UMBC and other state schools, that has meant opening up or eliminating financial aid programs reserved for blacks and other minorities.

While black students at College Park lament the loss of the prestigious Banneker scholarship, they say the university has made up for it in other ways.

"It seems like losing the court battle was actually a good thing," said Heather Austin, a 1997 College Park graduate who was one of the last Banneker Scholars. "Instead of just letting it fizzle out, they started creating other opportunities for minorities to still attend."

Expanded efforts

Admissions recruiters have expanded their efforts to reach minorities. They visit inner-city high schools and middle schools, and colleges arrange for groups of black students to visit their campuses. Some schools, such as College Park and Frostburg State University, also have gone to great lengths to make their campuses more inviting, setting up minority student centers and revising their curricula to instill diversity.

"Diversity is a priority," said Linda M. Clement, director of undergraduate admissions at College Park.

But conservatives, who have mounted legal and legislative challenges to affirmative action on campuses in a dozen other states, are skeptical. "That's the new mantra: 'diversity,' " said Paul D. Kamenar, executive legal director of the Washington Legal Foundation. Kamenar's group represented Daniel Podboresky, whose 1990 lawsuit barred the use of race-based scholarships on Maryland campuses.

"If that is simply code for the color of somebody's skin," Kamenar warned, "then the University of Maryland better watch out, because they may be setting themselves up for another expensive lawsuit for engaging in reverse discrimination."

Impact on enrollment

After losing its four-year court battle to retain the Banneker scholarship for blacks, the University of Maryland merged it with the Francis Scott Key Scholarship, another merit-only grant open to all. The number of black students getting Banneker-Key money has declined by a third since the programs were combined.

But College Park has nevertheless boosted its African-American enrollment, from 12.3 percent of all undergraduates in 1994 to 14.4 percent last year. College Park is recognized as one of the nation's most diverse flagship university campuses. It and UMBC also rank among the top campuses awarding science and engineering degrees to blacks.

College Park's continued gain in minority enrollment contrasts with dramatic declines at flagship universities in Texas and California after a court decision and a referendum, respectively, that barred consideration of race in college and professional school admissions.

The difference for Maryland, experts say, stems largely from the fact that the courts have outlawed affirmative action only in financial aid, not admissions criteria.

It also helps that state education officials have responded to the legal setback over scholarships by increasing other efforts to promote campus diversity.

The Banneker scholarship was more than a free ride for its recipients. Scholars had regular meetings, their own faculty advisers and expectations that they would perform community service and become campus leaders. The combined scholarship program has lost at least some of that sense of community, according to Austin.

But Christian Rieser, a Banneker-Key recipient, thinks that doing away with grants for blacks has eliminated a source of tension on campus by putting everyone "on an equal footing."

"It's helped bring people together," said the senior engineering student from Middletown.

In opening up its Meyerhoff Scholars program to nonblack students, UMBC has attempted to retain the original spirit of the program. White applicants are considered, but they must have demonstrated some interest in helping minority communities -- tutoring inner-city schoolchildren, for instance.

"It has to be a particular kind of student who has an interest in understanding the issues of race in our country," said UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski III.

Matt Hyman said he felt awkward when he showed up on the Catonsville campus in June for the summer "bridge" program UMBC runs for incoming Meyerhoff Scholars. Of the 53 scholars, 33 are African-American, 11 Asian- American and two Hispanic.

Coming from a mostly white high school, Hyman found himself in the minority. But midway through the intensive six-week session, he said, "We all fit together, and now we're one group."

Montrell Smith has mixed feelings about the changes.

"By opening it up to other races, that diminishes the number of African-Americans that have a chance to be on track for Ph.D.s," said the 18-year-old engineering student from Silver Spring.

But by bringing together students of diverse backgrounds, he added, "It can help us grow and become well-rounded."

Maryland's public colleges and universities dole out millions in scholarships aimed at diversifying their student bodies. The 11 degree-granting campuses in the university system, as well as the two state schools outside the system, awarded $2.9 million in grants and scholarships in 1996-1997 with the intent of luring minorities to their campuses.

Whites as 'minorities'

In the case of the state's four historically black campuses, "minorities" can mean white students. Last year, for instance, Morgan State University gave nearly $188,000 in "diversity grants" to 77 undergraduate and graduate students.

While race might no longer be the sole basis for deciding who gets scholarships, schools give out money based on other measures of diversity, such as whether the applicant is the first in his or her family to go to college, or attended a school with high dropout rates.

But, at Morgan State, three years after the court's ban on race-exclusive scholarships, no black students received the school's "diversity grants," according to reports filed with the Maryland Higher Education Commission.

Race-based scholarships were created to help overcome the state's legacy of campus segregation, which included denying Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice, entry into the university's law school.

Critics of race-based scholarships, like the Washington Legal Foundation's Kamenar, say College Park's increase in minority enrollment since the Banneker grants were eliminated "show they really weren't necessary."

But Clement, College Park's undergraduate admissions director, said that with the states unaffected by the court ruling still offering race-based grants, the best students often go where they can get the most financial aid.

With race-based scholarships ruled out, the major way of boosting diversity, especially at selective campuses such as College Park, has been to move away from relying on grade-point averages and standardized test scores to decide who can be admitted.

At College Park, which has been on a quest for national prominence, the combined SAT scores of entering black freshmen are nearly 200 points lower, on average, than those of white freshmen.

Black freshmen's high school grade-point averages also trail those of white freshmen, on average, by about one-third of a point.

Those differences mirror the gaps seen nationally between the SAT scores and grades of black and white high school students. In other states, such disparities have been highlighted by critics of affirmative action.

"If the university is lowering the bar or lowering standards, that would be another impermissible form of discrimination, just as the Banneker scholarships were," said the Washington Legal Foundation's Kamenar.

But College Park's admissions director says test scores and grades are only two of many factors weighed in evaluating the 17,000 applications they receive each year. "Admissions is more of an art than a science," Clement said. "It's more subjective than these numbers."

Lawsuits alleging reverse discrimination have been filed against universities in Michigan and Washington, as well as in Maryland.

Legislation proposed

Bills that would forbid affirmative action on campuses were introduced during the past year in 10 states, according to the American Council on Education, the umbrella association of the nation's colleges and universities.

None of the legislation has passed, but Washington state has a ballot question this fall that would bar the consideration of race or gender in college admissions.

The furor over affirmative action has prompted some states, such as North Carolina, to review their admissions practices without being sued.

"Everybody's looking over their shoulders and listening for footsteps," said Robert Kronley, senior consultant with the Southern Education Foundation in Atlanta. Kronley is senior author of an upcoming report, which concludes that many states' efforts to diversify campuses are losing ground or at best stagnating.

At College Park, there is one sign that minority enrollment gains might be slowing: The proportion of black students in the entering freshman class has slipped slightly during the past few years. The overall enrollment was boosted by an influx of students who transferred to the campus after spending one or two years elsewhere.

"The real question for [Maryland colleges]," Kronley said, "is, are they going to be able to maintain some of the earlier momentum."

Pub Date: 8/09/98