Gearhart starts fund drive to aid last undocumented students
Posted on Sunday, November 16, 2008
When members of a Prairie Grove family heard a new policy would cost a handful of University of Arkansas students thousands of extra dollars per year, they decided to open their wallets.
David and Pam Parks were driving with David’s mother, Peggy Parks, to an Oct. 24 reception for Fayetteville campus philanthropists when they began discussing the plight of the students. On the ride to a Chancellor’s Society soiree, the three decided to find out more about a university fundraising initiative.
The four-year, $ 400, 000 fundraising campaign for students who are or might be illegal aliens is a one-time effort to help 19 students already enrolled at UA, said Chancellor G. David Gearhart.
The effort has raised roughly $ 150, 000 in gifts and pledges from private donors like the Parks family.
The money will help the students finish their bachelor’s degrees by paying the difference between the in-state tuition rate they enrolled under and a new requirement that they pay the campus’s out-of-state tuition rate, the chancellor said.
Some among the group were infants or young children when their parents migrated from Mexico, Central America or South America, he said, and have little to no connection to their home countries after graduating from Arkansas high schools.
“These are students who grew up here,” Gearhart said. “They played sports. They were in the band.
“ It’s not like we’re talking about students who are teeming across the border.”
In the past, UA was among Arkansas campuses that did not require prospective students to provide Social Security numbers and that didn’t ask if they were legal residents of the United States, either for purposes of admission or eligibility for in-state tuition.
On May 22, the Arkansas Department of Higher Education advised universities that offering in-state tuition to Arkansas students residing illegally in the country possibly violates federal law. The 1996 law bars illegal aliens from obtaining financial benefits at public colleges and universities that are not available to all U. S. citizens regardless of their state of residence.
The next day, UA System President B. Alan Sugg said its campuses would change their policies by asking students for evidence of legal residency.
“Now, we’ve been told that we have to use the Social Security numbers,” Gearhart said.
If the student refuses to provide one, they are treated as an out-of-state student who has to pay higher tuition, he said. After the system directive, UA identified 25 students who had provided invalid Social Security numbers or no numbers at all. While it’s not proof that the students were illegal aliens, it did call their status into question, Gearhart said. The campus later narrowed the list of students who might be illegal aliens to 19, he said. The figure represents less than 0. 1 percent of the 19, 191 students UA enrolled this fall. “These students are at all different levels of their education,” Gearhart said.
COURT RULING The federal law in question is U. S. Code Title 8, Chapter 14, Subchapter II, Section 1623, which went into effect July 1, 1998, said state Education Department spokesman Dale Ellis.
It reads in part: “An alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a state (or a political subdivision ) for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration, and scope ) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”
On Sept. 10, the Arkansas attorney general’s office issued a legal opinion stating that “undocumented individuals may enroll in Arkansas’ public colleges and universities and that such schools are not obliged to verify citizenship as a condition of enrollment.”
In-state tuition eligibility is a separate matter, the opinion concluded, adding that ordinarily the Arkansas attorney general doesn’t opine on federal law.
Five days later, a California appeals court ruled unconstitutional that state’s policy of granting in-state tuition to illegal aliens at public higher education institutions.
Martinez v. Board of Regents of the University of California concerned a class-action lawsuit filed by the Immigration Reform Law Institute on behalf of roughly 80, 000 U. S. citizens who paid as much as $ 17, 000 a year more to attend California public universities. At UA’s Fayetteville campus, a typical student carrying 15 credit-hours per semester would pay $ 8, 877. 30 more annually in tuition for the out-of-state rate — $ 13, 887. 30 per year compared with $ 5, 010.
FLAGGED DATA The 19 UA students aren’t necessarily deemed to be living in the country illegally, because some simply don’t have Social Security numbers, Gearhart said. For instance, Ellis said, last month that even when the department flagged Social Security numbers as questionable, other causes could be student refusal to provide a number or data-entry errors.
Last month, the state Education Department ran a tally at some universities and colleges and found that of 22, 000 students enrolled for a summer term, only 80 had no Social Security number or an invalid one.
In July, after the department completed a test run on numbers from the past academic year, the University of Central Arkansas in Conway attributed some of its flagged data to U. S. citizens who didn’t want to reveal their Social Security numbers to the university, legal-resident students whose numbers were entered incorrectly and international students legally studying in the country on student visas who aren’t required to get a Social Security number.
The department doesn’t have a problem with schools covering out-of-state tuition for the students in question with private money.
“The federal law only covers state taxpayer money,” Ellis said.
State Rep. Rick Green, R-Van Buren, who’s been vocal in contending Arkansas shouldn’t give benefits to illegal aliens, said his opposition has focused on taxpayer-funded benefits.
“I don’t have any problems with private funds being used,” Green said.
He said he questions if students here illegally displace resources for legal students.
“I just wonder what is the total effect: What is that negative effect, if any ?” Green said. “Does that reduce the amount of housing, does that reduce the number of courses available ?. “ And I don’t know if it does. I’m just saying there could be more repercussion and fallout of this than just the tuition.”
CHANCELLOR’S LETTER Gearhart drafted a form letter explaining his position on why the university is asking donors to help the students after receiving about 15 inquiries. He has used the talking points to draft response letters to some people who have asked him about the issue, including Arkansans and UA alumni.
“I have gotten some meanspirited e-mails, but I’ve also gotten some that are supportive,” he said. “There are some that are from the fringe — they almost even are threatening.”
He doesn’t respond to those with foul language or threats, he said, but those seeking an understanding of his position prompt a response regardless of whether they agree with him.
“Please know that I certainly do not condone illegal immigration and that I will always obey the law,” Gearhart wrote in the draft letter, which he provided to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “But the reality is that the federal government has sole responsibility for immigration policy and enforcement and its immigration policy does not seem to be working.”
The letter states stronger prevention is probably needed to halt illegal immigration.
“However, punishing their children a decade after the fact is not going to fix the problem,” Gearhart wrote. “Since we accepted them as resident students, using their high school diploma as evidence, I believe we have an obligation to assist them with private money for the differential.”
Central Arkansas also has a significant Hispanic population, but the University of Arkansas at Little Rock is not raising private funds.
“We don’t have any specific initiatives to do anything like that,” said Bob Denman, UALR’s executive director of development.
A FAMILY’S DECISION When the Parks family arrived at the reception, they learned from Gearhart and Bob Mc-Math, interim provost, about the students and their potential to contribute to society, David Parks said. “We felt like it was very worthwhile — that they have accepted these students from instate, they’re from Arkansas high schools and they’ve lived most of their lives here,” he said. “To change them to out-of-state, we didn’t feel that it seemed fair.” Parks said he and his wife contributed a gift — he declined to reveal the amount — and that his mother made her own gift. The Parks’ have a history of giving to UA.
There’s the Parks Family professorship set up in 2003 for the College of Education and Health Professions. David Parks, a 1980 UA graduate with a bachelor of science in education, is part of the college’s Dean Advisory Council.
Gifts from his mother and late father established the Peggy and Donald Parks Endowed Nursing Scholarship and the Peggy and Donald Parks Endowed Teaching Scholarship.
“We were just happy to assist in this,” David Parks said. “This is a private donation to students who have, in a sense, had their plans changed, their tuition changed, through no fault of their own.”
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