North Carolina vs. HEW

A classic struggle over integrating a university

Everybody was worried. North Carolina University officials did not want their school to become the first state university system ever to lose federal funding in a desegregation dispute with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. HEW Secretary Joseph Califano did not want voters in tobacco country to become even angrier at him (and at the President) in the wake of his antismoking campaign. Besides, a legal row with the state could slow school integration.

Califano telephoned an invitation to North Carolina's Governor James Hunt: How about a last-minute meeting to work out a compromise? Hunt agreed, and the university drew up a $40 million plan for new academic programs and building renovation at the state's five predominantly black campuses, where 70% of the state university's 20,500 black students are enrolled. To pay for the improvements, the Governor agreed to pass up a planned $40 million tax cut. But the effort failed. The university concluded that HEW'S demands were "rigid" and last week sued to prevent the department from cutting off at least $20 million in federal aid.

As in other Southern states, the higher-education campuses of North Carolina have historically been either white (eleven campuses) or black (five), a legacy of earlier "separate but equal" racial laws. Though all schools are now open to blacks and whites alike, only 6% of full-time undergraduate students at the white schools are black, while at the black schools, only 4% of such students are white. There is also a good deal of pro gram duplication at local black and white campuses.

The negotiations with HEW foundered on the question of what to do with these duplicate programs. Califano demanded that in addition to spending more money on black campuses, North Carolina agree to reduce program duplication if integration lagged during the next four years. He also demanded that the school desist from starting any major, potentially popular, new programs at its white campuses. North Carolina insisted that decisions about where programs were offered were none of HEW's business and that strengthening of courses at the black schools was the key to further integration. Said U.N.C. President William Friday: "Our basic interest is to give more opportunity to go to college. You don't do that by closing programs." Adds Albert N. Whiting, black chancellor of North Carolina Central: "My answer to HEW is that we should place the emphasis on enhancing our curriculum."

U.N.C.'s suit, filed by Washington Attorney Charles Morgan, is a basic challenge to all HEW desegregation efforts in Southern colleges and universities. Morgan, a former American Civil Liberties Union counsel, told a U.S. district court in North Carolina that the state has "a higher level of desegregation than most other institutions of higher education North and South." Last fall its predominantly white campuses had a greater percentage of black students than Harvard (6% vs. 5.02%) and the State University of New York (5.2%). At U.N.C.'s Chapel Hill campus, blacks in professional programs such as medicine and law make up 9.2% of enrollment.

Morgan contends HEW should no longer require detailed desegregation planning from North Carolina. He argues that the state's history of de jure segregation--the basis of HEW'S demands--has become legally irrelevant. If upheld, Morgan's argument could undermine university desegregation agreements negotiated by HEW with Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Virginia.

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