try this
link, and see if it works for you.
an interesting article. isn't it funny how silent everyone gets when whitey is the victim?
anyway, in case it somehow gets purged from the digital ether...
Excluded student sues over workshop
Minority journalism event said to bar white student due to her race
BY TOM CAMPBELL
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Sep 27, 2006
Parents of a Monacan High School student yesterday filed a federal lawsuit claiming the girl was excluded from a Virginia Commonwealth University/Times-Dispatch educational program for minorities because she is white.
Jane and Steven Smith, parents of Emily Smith, 15, are suing the sponsors of the Urban Journalism Workshop in a class-action complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond.
They are represented by The Center for Individual Rights, a nonprofit law firm in Washington that has been a leader in attacks on affirmative action.
The defendants are VCU; Media General Inc., parent company of the Richmond Times-Dispatch; the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, which helps pay for the program; and eight individuals including Thomas A. Silvestri, the newspaper's publisher and president.
According to the lawsuit, Emily Smith learned about the workshop from an article in The Times-Dispatch and applied in March. On April 17, defendant Bonnie Davis, a VCU professor of mass communications, sent an e-mail saying Emily Smith had been accepted for the workshop held this past summer.
"It said congratulations -- you have been selected," Jane Smith said yesterday. "It said there would be a letter confirming that."
But about April 25, Davis talked to Emily Smith by phone. "She asked what her race was," Jane Smith said. When Emily answered, Davis told her she could not be in the workshop because of her race, the lawsuit alleges.
Jane Smith said she called Davis, who told her the program is only for minorities.
Davis said yesterday that she could not comment on the lawsuit and referred questions to Pam Lepley, a VCU spokeswoman.
Lepley said VCU officials had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on it. Lepley said she did not know whether whites are excluded from the workshop or whether any had ever been accepted. The workshop was started in 1984.
The Urban Journalism Work- shop is a two-week summer program to interest minority high school journalists in newspaper careers. About a dozen students of racial and ethnic minorities are chosen annually to participate in intensive, hands-on newspaper journalism. They receive instruction from VCU professors, Times-Dispatch newsroom staffers and others and produce a workshop newspaper.
"I have no comment because I have not seen the suit," Silvestri said.
A spokesman for Dow Jones, located in South Brunswick, N.J., also declined to comment yesterday.
Jane Smith said she sought help from The Center for Individual Rights after a friend suggested the organization to her. The decision to file a lawsuit was made jointly by the Smiths and the organization, she said.
The center represented plaintiffs in a challenge to the University of Michigan's admission policies. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly ruled in June 2003 that diversity in student bodies is a proper public interest and that universities may consider race as part of the admissions process.
The lawsuit makes a constitutional claim that Emily Smith's rights under the 14th Amendment have been violated by her exclusion from the workshop. It seeks to make the defendants stop treating workshop applicants differently based on race, admission of Emily Smith into next summer's workshop and compensatory damages. It asks no specific amount.
"My goal would be that they offer a program for outstanding journalism students of all races," Jane Smith said.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said this lawsuit appears to be part of the continuing legal wars over affirmative action. Participation by the center, which has been involved in challenges to college admission policies favoring minorities going back to the 1990s, points that way.
"They may be attempting to open another front on the affirmative-action issue," Tobias said. "I just don't know if they'll be successful here."
Contact staff writer Tom Campbell at
tcampbell@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6416.
Edited by: Jimmy Chitwood 
