Racial segregation is making a comeback at two of the nation’s state universities.  Yesterday I wrote about the University of Iowa’s plans for a black-only 35-student “learning community,” to be patronizingly titled “Young, Gifted and Black.”

Well, nobody likes fads more than educators.  Jim Crow is establishing an East Coast bastion in Storrs, Connecticut.  Kaitlyn Scallhorn reports at TheBlaze:

In order to help black males graduate, the University of Connecticut is constructing a dorm with a living space only for them.

Called the ScHOLA2RS House, the living community for African American males is set to open in 2016. According to UConn’s website, the ScHOLA2RS House is “a scholastic initiative to groom, nurture, and train the next generation of leaders to address grand challenges in society through the promotion of academic success in undergraduate programs at the University of Connecticut and in competitive graduate programs.”

The customary gobbledygook used to justify racial segregation is in abundant display:

It is a space for African American men to one, come together and validate their experiences that they may have on campus.

“Validate their experiences”?  Does this mean avoid questioning their reactions?  Apparently so, because:

“Number two, it’s also a space where they can have conversation and also talk with individuals who come from the same background who share the same experience,” Hines told WTIC-TV.

Wait a minute!  The Supreme Court has rationalized affirmative action racial preferences on the grounds that diversity is essential to the mission of education.  We all learn from others who are different from ourselves.  And those are the grounds on which we violate the Equal Protection Clause, according to SCOTUS.  And now UConn is saying that it is important to talk with people from the same background and the same experience – and that’s why we should impose racial segregation, also in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

Unlike the University of Iowa, the blacks-only dorm will also be segregated by sex.  That is causing trouble for UConn, too:

“I was not pleased, my immediate thought was ‘What?’” Haddiyyah Ali, a fourth-semester Africana studies and political science major told the Daily Campus. “I know there had to be a lot of research that went into it…but just for me coming from a student perspective, my initial thought was what about black women and girls – what about us?”

“Just this idea that 43 black men get retention programming and everyone else is left in limbo,” Ali continued. “I will always contest to the fact that black men on the campus aren’t given enough resources, I will in no way dispel that fact, but my questioning isn’t if they need, but is if they need it in this way.

I wonder what “contest to the fact” means.  It is a new expression to me.  But this young woman is not happy to be left out of consideration for Jim Crow treatment.

So much confusion results when we get away from the basic clear principles our Constitution lays out.