Court to Reconsider Hawaii Schools Case
February 26, 2006
The New York Times
By JANIS L. MAGIN
HONOLULU, Feb. 25 — An 8-year-old boy walked up to Pono Shim in a movie
theater lobby a few months ago, held out his hand and asked how much
money he was holding. Mr. Shim saw six quarters, but the boy, a native
Hawaiian from a poor neighborhood, was unable to add them up and could
not tell if he had enough to play video games.
It is an exchange that Mr. Shim considers a telling example of why the
Kamehameha Schools, a highly rated private institution with campuses on
three islands, must maintain its contentious policy of admitting only
native Hawaiians. Otherwise, says Mr. Shim, president of the school's
Association of Teachers and Parents, many disadvantaged Hawaiians will
not get a decent education.
"We're not done serving our kids the way we need to, to serve the
Hawaiian population," said Mr. Shim, a graduate whose daughter is a
junior at the main Kapalama campus.
Mr. Shim and other Kamehameha supporters were heartened this week when
a federal appeals court in San Francisco agreed to reconsider a ruling
last August that declared the school's admissions policy in violation
of a Reconstruction-era law, the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
That earlier decision, by a three-judge panel of the United States
Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, prompted alumni and other
supporters to hold marches in Honolulu, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
It came in a lawsuit filed on behalf of a non-Hawaiian teenager who
claims that Kamehameha's policy of admitting only those who can prove
indigenous ancestry amounts to racial discrimination.
In a ruling Wednesday, the court said it would rehear the case with a
panel of 15 judges, as had been requested by the school's board of
trustees. In the meantime, the admissions policy stands.
A lawyer in California for the non-Hawaiian teenager, who had
unsuccessfully sought admission, said the boy and his parents were
disappointed that he would not be able to attend Kamehameha since he
was likely to graduate before the legal issues were resolved.
"On the other hand, the family is in it for the long haul," the lawyer,
Eric Grant, said in a telephone interview. "We still have the facts on
our side, and we still have the law on our side, and we expect to
prevail."
Many politicians in Hawaii — including the governor, the attorney
general and the state's four members of Congress — have publicly
expressed support for the admissions policy of the school, which is
Hawaii's largest private landowner. The school was founded 118 years
ago at the direction of the will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop and
is financed by her estate's $6.2 billion trust, whose mission is to
educate and "improve the capability and well-being of people of
Hawaiian ancestry." The school receives no federal funds.
"It's too bad that there's this energy to remove such an important
legacy from the Hawaiian people," said Jonathan Osorio, director of the
University of Hawaii's Center for Hawaiian Studies. Mr. Osorio, a
Kamehameha graduate, is the father of two high school students there.
Admission at Kamehameha Schools is coveted, not only for the quality of
education, but also because tuition is less than half of that at most
Hawaii private schools. The main campus, with its sprawling
green-tile-roofed buildings and state-of-the-art athletic facilities,
is spread over 600 acres of a mountainside high above Honolulu. The
school has two smaller campuses, on Maui and on the Big Island of
Hawaii.
Dee Jay Mailer, the trust's chief executive officer and a Kamehameha
graduate, said the school enrolled about 5,000 students each year,
turning away far more Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian children than it
accepted.
"I have never heard anybody of non-Hawaiian ancestry complain about not
coming here," Ms. Mailer said. "Rather, what I have heard is Hawaiians
complaining, or being concerned, that they couldn't come here."
School supporters point to the princess's 1883 will as proof that she
intended for the income from her vast land holdings to pay to educate
the children of Hawaii.
The new court hearing has also rekindled a broader debate over the
rights of those who trace their lineage to the indigenous Polynesians
who populated the islands before Capt. James Cook arrived in 1778.
A bill pending in Congress that would grant federal recognition to
native Hawaiians, giving them equivalent legal standing to American
Indians and Native Alaskans, was shelved last fall after running into
fierce opposition from some Republican senators. Many in the islands,
including some native Hawaiian groups, also oppose the bill.
Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, recently spoke to the Senate majority
leader, Bill Frist, about the bill, said her spokesman, Russell Pang.
She thinks Mr. Frist is "intent on moving it forward," Mr. Pang said.