ATHENS — A relatively new Georgia Board of Regents policy regulating the admission of undocumented students and illegal immigrants has prevented a football recruit from gaining admission to the University of Georgia.
Chester Brown, a 6-foot-5, 340-pound offensive lineman from Hinesville, committed to the Bulldogs in July, but he confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and several other media outlets late Monday night that he was withdrawing his UGA commitment “for personal reasons,” declining to elaborate.
However, a variety of people with direct knowledge of the situation confirmed to the AJC on Tuesday that Brown’s change of heart was because his admissions application to UGA was rejected because of a controversial Board of Regents policy that was adopted in October 2010.
That policy, created in the wake of the Jessica Colotl uproar at Kennesaw State earlier that year, states that an undocumented student can’t take the seat of an otherwise academically qualified Georgia resident who has been turned away because of capacity constraints.
That could explain the abrupt change of heart for Brown. The son of Samoan immigrants, he certainly didn’t sound like he wanted to go anywhere other than Georgia. He actually had the date of his commitment to UGA — July 15, 2011 — tattooed on his arm shortly after making his pledge to Georgia coaches.
“It’s not because I don’t want to play for Georgia,” Brown said. “Everyone knows that I still have love for the Georgia family.”
Brown’s principal at Bradwell Institute, Scott Carrier, said federal privacy laws prevent him from discussing Brown’s case in detail. But he did say that it was an “immigration-related issue” and that the school has “not given up” on helping Brown realize his dream of attending UGA.
Carrier said he was seeking the counsel of an immigration attorney but, as of Tuesday, none has been hired.
Brown’s mother insists that her son was born in the United States, which would make him a citizen, but Brown may not have been able to provide documentation to that effect.
“Some things slipped through the cracks that could have prevented this had they been handled earlier,” Carrier said.
Calls to Nancy McDuff, UGA’s associate vice president for admissions and enrollment management, were unreturned. UGA spokesman Tom Jackson declined comment. Georgia coaches and athletic-association personnel are unable to talk about prospective student-athletes because of NCAA rules.
Regents spokesman John Millsaps said he was unaware of Brown’s specific case. But he confirmed that regents’ admissions policies regarding undocumented students had “tightened up” in the wake of the Colotl case at Kennesaw State. After a minor traffic arrest in the spring of 2010, it was discovered that Colotl, an undocumented Georgia resident, had been incorrectly attending Kennesaw on in-state tuition.
Millsaps said that committees were formed that summer to conduct an evaluation of the statewide policies regarding the admission of undocumented students.
They found that there were approximately 521 undocumented students among the 311,000 students in the university system. Within that was “a smaller subset” of illegal immigrants.
That led to the formation of a Regents policy that states:
“A person who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible for admission to any University System institution which, for the two most recent academic years, did not admit all academically qualified applicants (except for cases in which applicants were rejected for non-academic reasons).”
Another policy requires a “verification of lawful presence.” Brown would need proof of U.S. nativity. Brown’s father, Siliga, and his mother, Ifo, moved to Long Beach, Calif., from Samoa in the mid-1990s for financial reasons, according to published reports. They fled crime and gang activity in 2004 and joined an uncle, retired from the U.S. Army, in Hinesville in 2004.
Staff writer Michael Carvell contributed to this article.
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