Judge orders USP to grant enrollment to brown student – 04/05/2024 – Education

Judge Danilo de Paula, from the 2nd Court of Cerqueira César, determined this Friday (5) that USP must guarantee the enrollment of Alison dos Santos Rodrigues, 18, who was denied a place in medicine because she was not considered mixed race. The case was revealed by Sheet.

The university has 72 hours to comply with the preliminary (temporary) decision, and an appeal is possible. When contacted by the report, USP did not comment on the decision.

Alison was approved in medicine on the first call by Provão Paulista, an entrance exam exclusively for public school students and which in its first edition distributed 1,500 USP places. The young man competed to reserve vacancies for candidates who graduated from the public school system and self-declared PPIs (black, mixed race and indigenous).

The teenager identified himself as mixed race, but the USP hetero-identification committee disagreed with his self-declaration. After evaluating a photograph and holding a virtual meeting lasting approximately one minute with the candidate, the panel decided that he could not be considered mixed race.

At the request of the Court, USP had presented on Wednesday (3) the reasons for having denied enrollment. According to the university, Alison was not considered brown because she had “light skin, sharp mouth and lips, shaved hair” and therefore did not present the “set of phenotypic characteristics of a black person”.

For the judge, USP’s argument is “generic, without specific reference to the candidate’s conditions and in apparent contradiction with the photographs brought to the file”.

The judge also stated that Alison may have been harmed by the commission’s evaluation process, as he was not guaranteed the right to be analyzed in person because he was approved by Provão Paulista — as happens with candidates selected by Fuvest, the university’s own entrance exam. USP.

“In effect, the in-person assessment could have yielded a different result, as lighting conditions and the definition of electronic equipment can generate distortions. There is, therefore, a probability of the invoked right”, says the judge’s decision.

Alison was not the only candidate to have self-declaration as brown rejected by the university this year. As she showed Sheetamong those approved on the first call alone, 204 appealed after having their self-declaration denied.

At the beginning of March, another student managed to secure a place at the Faculty of Law through the courts, after USP denied that he was mixed race.

WHAT USP SAYS

Asked why it did not guarantee in-person assessment for all candidates, USP said that “this would require a calendar of hetero-identification boards that is incompatible with the calendar of entrance exams at Enem, São Paulo universities and Provão Paulista”.

He also argued that the online investigation takes place to avoid harm to candidates from outside São Paulo. “We would have many candidates traveling to São Paulo without having registered and without a definitive response from the hetero-identification boards, which would cause harm to the candidates”, said the university, in a statement.

USP also argued that the different format used to investigate the self-declaration of candidates does not harm the equality of the process. “In virtual versions, the hetero-identification panel takes great care to ensure that phenotypic characteristics are viewed appropriately, asking, for example, that candidates change their body position and look for places with better lighting. Everything to ensure the equality of the hearing.”

Despite the university institutionally stating that the difference in the process guarantees equality, rector Carlos Carlotti Junior promised to “correct and improve” the system for verifying self-declaration. He stated that he would make changes to the process to ensure that every candidate is evaluated in person.