http://g1.globo.com/espirito-santo/educacao/noticia/2016/02/grupo-denuncia-ao-ministerio-publico-fraude-em-cotas-da-ufes.html
https://archive.is/sheOx
translation is imperfect but good enough
Group denounces a fraud in Ufes' quotas to the Public Prosecutor's Office
Applicants cheat ethnoracial self-declaration, says the Negrada Collective. Ufes says it's not their duty to supervise the process.
The Negrada Collective, an organization of black and native students, registered a complaint in the state and federal Public Prosecutor's Offices over applicants who cheat the ethnoracial self-declaration to benefit from the Espírito Santo Federal University (Ufes)'s racial quota system in the entrance exam.
In a note published this friday (12), the Collective claims that "in order to obtain advantages", students have "illegally enjoyed the subjectivity of the term "Pardo" of the PPI (Black, Pardo and Native quota student) to compete for the quota slots."
The situation was noted after several denouncements received by the group. After searching applicants approved within the reserved slots' profiles in social media, Negrada members identified the problem after seeing that students without black characteristics were approved within the quota system.
"Ufes has no evaluation board to oversee the self-declaration. If the person declares something false, this is crime, he/she's falsifying a document", said the Negrada member, Mirtes Santos.
She says the situation has happened in public institutions throughout the country, mainly in highly disputed courses, such as Medicine and that the concern increases because the university is in the enrollment period.
"The students who did this are already being enrolled and the process gets more complicated as Ufes has to cancel it", explains Mirtes.
If it becomes a judicial battle, Mirtes emphasizes that, given the possibility of an appeal, the cheater may finish his formation before the case ends.
"It's a very sensible question, but people seek their greatgreatgrandparents' black ancestry to justify themselves", she says.
Since last year, Negrada has denounced the situation that has repeatedly happened in the entrance exam this year to Ufes' ombudsman. The administration just shows the document proving the student made his self-declaration.
"This is crime, identity theft. They're taking away a black's right of acess to the University", claims Mirtes.
The federal PPO informed it has received the complaint and it is being analysed. The state's PPO did not reply to us on this matter.
Despite the Negrada Collective's denouncement, Ufes informed it is not their duty to oversee the process, as the self-declaration system has been adopted for quotas. The Culture and Communication superintendent, Edgar Rebolsas, explain there'll only be an investigation for specific cases.
"We won't do an investigation over a collective and wide complaint, as there are no criteria for it to be investigated. In case there's a large number of complaints over specific students, we can start a trial and establish parameters to analyse the situation. So far Ufes has not received a single complaint of this kind", he said.
Rebolsas further explained that the student needn't prove that he's black, pardo or native in the enrollment process, as it a self-declaration system.
"It's not a photo on a social network that'll say if he's black or not, as this criteria doesn't exist. In the self-declaration system, the student assumes an identity and that was the university's system, believing that a student wouldn't commit a fraud", he commented.
On the possibility of the creation of a comission to oversee frauds in the quota system, the superintendent commented it's the university council's decision. "If there was a series of complaints there'd be a reason for change and the creation of a comission, but it's something to be studied. Currently it isn't needed", he concluded.
The problem of frauds in quotas, both racial and social, has been denounced not only in Ufes, but also in several public institutions in the country.
In 2014, the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) expelled a student for fraud in the social quota reserve slot and another 60 are being investigated by the Rio de Janeiro Public Prosecutor's Office for having declared themselves blacks, despite some of them being blue-eyed blondes.
Because of this, institutions such as the Brasília University (UnB) created a kind of board to check the information given in comittee format.
The Negrada member, Mirtes Santos, explains that every university determines the board model, which must be discussed by the university council.
"Several interviews with questionings on ethnoracial questions and phenotype analysis are made", she explains.