A medical student at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Unirio) was sentenced to lose her place and pay compensation for defrauding the quota system.
The student will have to return R$8,800 to the public coffers for material damages and R$10,000 for individual moral damages caused to the university. In addition, she must also pay R$10,000 for collective moral damages allocated to the Fund for the Defense of Diffuse Rights (FDD).
The young woman's conviction came after action by the Federal Public Ministry (MPF).
In 2017, to enter the federal university, the student made use of the affirmative action system aimed at black and brown people with a gross income of up to 1.5 minimum wage, and claimed to have black genotypic traits inherited from her paternal great-grandfather and brown family ancestry, for part of his maternal family.
According to the MPF, through the race self-declaration mechanism, the student circumvented the quota system and the income declaration, as she was “phenotypically white and her parents had a standard of living and assets that were not consistent with what was declared”. The phenotype is the set of traits and physical characteristics of the individual.
The student's entry was possible because, at the time, Unirio did not have a Racial Heteroidentification Commission to evaluate the entry of new students.
The mechanism is a way of controlling the right to reserve places, and the commission can exclude the candidate when it concludes that his phenotype does not fit into the racial group to which he declared to belong.
A year later, in 2018, with the installation of the Racial Heteroidentification Commission at the university, the student failed during the retroactive heteroidentification process to evaluate the information declared about her status as black or brown, based on physical traits.
In her defense, she stated that there was no provision for evaluation by a hetero-identification panel in the university notice.
However, in the action, the MPF defended that the self-declaration does not have a presumption of truth, and there is no impediment for Unirio to review and cancel the enrollment of students who do not fit into the quota policies in the face of signs of fraud.
Still in the action, the MPF stated that the improper occupation of a vacancy reserved for racial quotas disrespects the duty of the state and society itself to build a supportive society, reduce social inequalities and promote the good of all without racial prejudice.
Source: CNN Brasil
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