LA CROSSE, Wisc.--The director of minority affairs at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse and her assistant recently resigned to protest the failure of a minority-group candidate to win a place on the university's five-student homecoming court.

Gretchen C. Lockett, the director, and Pearl Jackson, a program-development specialist in the minority-affairs office, said in a statement that they had acted to call attention to racism on the campus. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported this week.

After the resignations, the student senate voted to cancel the homecoming festivities, set for last weekend. A later vote allowed the events to take place as planned, but with a new selection process for the homecoming court. Instead of being interviewed and selected by a committee of students and university employees, members of the court will be elected by direct vote of the students.