For the second time this month, and after a June protest and march, a rally Monday on the front-entrance steps of Rosalind Franklin University in North Chicago was held to focus attention on what organizers believe were recent racist admission decisions.
The town hall meeting and protest, which drew about 75 people, addressed the admission denial of six medical school applicants who were rejected by the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science (RFUMS).
The students were part of the Pre-Matriculation Program (PMP), an enrichment program sponsored by RFUMS which offers post-baccalaureate students from disadvantaged backgrounds enrollment at no cost in a non-degree curriculum track.
“The school has not publicly acknowledged its responsibility in their faulty and racist admissions practices,” said Nahae Kim, a second-year Chicago Medical School student and town hall co-organizer.
“We cannot move forward if we do not acknowledge and correct the harms of the past,” Kim said. “The six students continue to be left in the dark.”
Jeevana Pakanati of Northbrook, a second-year Chicago Medical School student, said, “I am but a mere fellow student, peer and human, who is curious as to how our school wants to address and rectify the ongoing systemic racism.”
If the six students had been admitted, they would have started studies in late August.
“It’s a shame,” said town hall speaker Pierre Rachal, a PMP student denied admission. “I’m infuriated by what happened here. I’m frustrated because they are intentionally trying to keep minority students out of the school.”
RFU spokesman Dan Moran said the Chicago Medical School, “fields some 10,000 total applications annually, including those from the PMP program, and every application is reviewed to determine if the applicant meets specific admissions criteria for the 189 available seats.”
While PMP participants, “are more than 100 times more likely to be accepted into the medical school than other applicants, it is not a guarantee,” he said.
“While we cannot comment on any individual admissions decision, we engage in ongoing assessment of our processes, and we take opportunities to review past decisions,” Moran said. “We expressly reject that our decisions were infected by racism, either on an individual level or on a systemic basis.”
According to an #AdmitTheSix Change.org petition started by CHAMPS Chicago, “Four Black students and two Latinos were denied admission … due to systemic and explicit racism in the institution’s admission process.”
“The six racial minority students successfully completed the Pre-Matriculation Program (PMP) at RFUMS with A/B letter grades, which historically, for over 30 years, have earned PMP students admission into Chicago Medical School.”
CHAMPS stands for Creating Health and Medical Pathways for Scholars.
Lloyd Sealey of Hyde Park, a third-year Chicago Medical School student, participated in the PMP program.
“I’m upset,” he said. “This is injustice. I mean, you have an institutional agreement with alumni of the university, medical doctors who trained here at the medical school.
“The students were told to perform at a certain level, and students performed at that level, they performed well, and when the time comes to be accepted to move on like I did, then now there’s a problem,” Sealey said. “I find that to be reprehensible and, quite frankly, disgusting.”
Dr. Fred Richardson, an Oak Park family medicine provider, was PMP director for seven years, but said he quit in February.
Richardson, along with CHAMPS, had endorsed all six denied applicants.
“I resigned in protest, and that distinction was important to me because I didn’t just walk out in an irresponsible fashion,” he said. “I walked out in protest to what was happening, to the injustice that I perceived happening here. And we all stood in unison that this was an injustice.”
The reasons given for the students’ denial, “were unacceptable,” said Richardson, who said he was informed he would have to interview to be considered for the position he vacated.
The PMP has an interim director, and a search committee is seeking to fill the position, according to Moran, RFU’s communications director.
“We can’t comment on personnel decisions,” he said.
Kim said, “Students requested reinstatement with the understanding that Dr. Richardson would also be willing to come back if the administration was willing to actually listen to him and students. It was constantly swept under the rug.”
Richardson said student application evaluation standards were changed without his knowledge while he was PMP director, ultimately preventing applicants of color from becoming doctors in under-served communities, where quality health care for minority patients is urgently needed.
“This is a public health catastrophe,” said Dr. Dennis Garrett, who is on the executive leadership team with CHAMPS. “It was unacceptable that they would not even allow him (Richardson) to sit at the table anymore, and in a black and brown town that’s unacceptable.”
Dr. Ronald Rembert Jr., a family medicine practitioner and a 2000 Chicago Medical School graduate, said, “I’m disappointed that it’s come to this point. These students have put in the work, they’ve lived up to their side of what was expected of them, only to have the door shut in their face.”
Moran said the university offers other programming, “which is geared toward building a pipeline for Latino students in the region,” and a research course, “in which high school students from under-served communities across Lake County, including North Chicago, the Round Lake area and Waukegan, are welcomed.
“We must underscore that participation in these outreach efforts, including the PMP, is not a guarantee of admission into a particular healthcare profession education program, including our medical school,” he said. “Individuals who are not offered admission continue to be supported on their career paths by the PM.”
For Pierre Rachal, a U.S. Army veteran and father of two daughters, “Life goes on,” he said.
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“I’ve been keeping up with studies,” said Rachal, who plans to apply to medical schools, including Rosalind Franklin.
“I’ll keep coming back to these steps, and I’ll march around the school if I have to until the leadership recognizes that they have a problem and they do something about it,” he said.
