Yale University has decided to let white students participate in a high-profile freshman-orientation program formerly reserved for members of minority groups.

The orientation program is one of several that Yale is opening to students of all races to avoid being accused of discrimination, Gila Reinstein, a Yale spokeswoman, said on Tuesday. She would not name all of the programs that have been changed, but she said that, in some cases, Yale needed to obtain the permission of outside donors who underwrite the programs before opening the programs to nonminority students.

In all cases, she said, the programs will remain focused on "building and supporting diversity and meeting the needs of minority students."

Richard H. Brodhead, the dean of Yale's undergraduate college, announced the change in the undergraduate-orientation program in a letter e-mailed to the college's students on Friday. The program is called Cultural Connections.

His letter said the change was necessary in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings last June in two cases involving race-conscious admissions policies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. While the Supreme Court "reaffirmed the value that the experience of diversity supplies as a component of education," the rulings made it "harder to justify programs that separate student communities instead of building them into an interactive whole," Mr. Brodhead's letter said.

"I expect this change to strengthen the Cultural Connections program, and indeed the whole fabric of Yale College," he said. He noted that the university already had made a similar change in the selection criteria for two fellowships and for its Science, Technology, and Research Scholars Program, which every year provides academic enrichment and research opportunities to about 100 students from groups that are underrepresented in the natural sciences and engineering.

But he said the university had no plans to change a program that augments its regular counseling services by providing counseling solely to minority students.

Mr. Brodhead said that the deans of Yale's various minority cultural centers had agreed to meet with students to discuss the changes in minority programs, and that the dean of student affairs, Betty G. Trachtenberg, and a representative from the general counsel's office would attend. Mr. Brodhead plans to leave Yale to become president of Duke University in July (The Chronicle, January 9).

The Cultural Connections program began in the 1970s as the Puerto Rican Orientation Program. It was subsequently transformed into the Pre-Registration Orientation Program, open to all "students of color," and was renamed the Cultural Connections program in 1999. It serves about 125 incoming freshmen every year, letting them visit and become acclimated to the campus for a week in late August, before classes start. Among the regular activities are faculty-led discussions of ethnicity, nationality, and race, and talks about Yale's academic expectations.

Yale is one of about 100 colleges that have received complaints about race-exclusive programs from two advocacy groups: the Center for Equal Opportunity, based in Sterling, Va., and the American Civil Rights Institute, based in Sacramento, Calif.

According to Roger B. Clegg, general counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity, about two-thirds of the colleges contacted have responded by either changing the eligibility criteria for their programs or providing assurances that the criteria in question had already been changed.

Harvard University's business school agreed two weeks ago to stop limiting participation in a summer program to members of particular minority groups (The Chronicle, February 18). Among the other colleges that have agreed to open programs to nonminority students are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and the University of Virginia.