The director of the Hillel Foundation at Purdue University has charged its admissions director with failure to implement a March 3 decision by the University’s Board of Trustees that seemed to eliminate admissions quotas based on geography. The quota system placed limitations on admissions from the New York-New Jersey area where more than half of the nation’s Jewish population resides. Its effect was to deprive Jews and other minority groups in that area of the same chance for admission to Purdue as other out-of-state applicants, according to Rabbi Gerald Engel. In a letter to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Rabbi Engel agreed that the Board of Trustees’ decision represented “a significant change” of policy but said that admissions director Harland White interpreted it as an affirmation of his quota system relating to geographic areas, “I have written to the president of the university that definite guidelines must be set by his office to avoid area discrimination.” Rabbi Engel stated.
He also sent letters to Purdue alumni charging that White took advantage of the “vague” language of the Board of Trustees decision and was still returning the applications and deposits of New York-New Jersey area applicants without processing them. The Purdue Board of Trustees stated that “the fundamental policy of the University will be to strive for the formation of an undergraduate student community academically, geographically and socially representative of the nation’s citizenry.” According to Engel, “Harland White now lumps the states of New York and New Jersey together. He no longer has a state quota, but an area quota.” But Engel went on, “the Board of Trustees’ policy did not seem to introduce any area quota but did acknowledge that Purdue would accept applicants from North, South, East and West, just as they would individuals from all racial, ethnic and religious groups. Purdue is the only state university to have an area quota as interpreted by Mr. White.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
