Tennessee State University is being accused, in a class-action lawsuit filed this week, of systematically discriminating against students who are not black in its awarding of financial aid.

So far, the only named plaintiff in the case is Angela Cela, a student from Guam. The suit alleges that such discrimination is widespread, however, and today’s issue of The City Paper of Nashville quotes one of Ms. Cela’s lawyers, Hal D. Hardin, as predicting that the suit would be joined by several white students.

Along with the university, the suit names as defendants Harold R. Mitchell, the head of its department of speech and audiology, and two faculty members in the department who advise students. The suit alleges that the department denied Ms. Cela a grant for her graduate studies because she is not black, and then created a hostile environment for her when she complained of discrimination. (When Ms. Cela explained that she is a Pacific Islander, and therefore should have qualified for a grant as a member of an underrepresented minority group, “she was advised by several of her professors that this entire situation could have been avoided had she announced she was not white,” the suit says.)

The suit argues that university administrators — who sided with the department and concluded no discrimination or harassment had taken place — were obliged to guard against racial discrimination and ensure financial aid was available to students of any race under the terms of a 2001 court order bringing an end to federal efforts to desegregate Tennessee’s higher-education system. —Peter Schmidt