Affirmative Action: Minority contracts no longer assured

Omaha World-Herald: Omaha city leaders hope - but can't guarantee - that minority-owned companies will get contracts to help build the new downtown ballpark this year. It also has sent the city and the University of Nebraska scrambling as they end programs that clearly violate the law, tweak scholarship requirements and strip from hiring policies newly banned language that mentions race, ethnicity or gender. University and city leaders describe the process as a delicate attempt to both follow the new law and ensure that the ban doesn't disproportionately hurt minorities and women. It means recruiting hard in cities like Grand Island and neighborhoods like north Omaha that have a disproportionate number of poor, minority students but also completely ending the practice of giving out scholarships that mention race or ethnicity. Instead, the university has geared scholarships toward students whose parents didn't attend college, or students who come from a low-income family, UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman said. But the university will keep a program called, "All Women, All Math" Day because it is supported by a federal grant, and federal regulations trump the state law. "I continue to expect that we'll continue to show increases in diversity, both at the faculty and student level," Perlman said. "That's still the goal. But the tools (UNL) has to meet those goals are more limited than they were before." The ban's biggest effect might be felt in Omaha, where the "PBE" program compelled contractors to hire one of 154 city-certified minority and female subcontractors to help construct city libraries, renovate city offices and clean city-owned buildings.

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