A graduate student has filed suit against the University of Connecticut, charging that university lured her with the promise of a prestigious merit-based scholarship, but then switched her to a "multicultural" scholarship designed to increase diversity.

Pamela Swanigan, who has been in UConn's English Ph.D program since 2009, said she wouldn't have come to UConn without a merit-based scholarship because she believed it would help her in a competitive job market.

She contends that UConn discriminated against her when it "shunted" her application into a pool of applicants for the diversity scholarship, the lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court says.

"It's not about the money," said Swanigan, who now lives in Nova Scotia."If this were about the money, I would be happy with the scholarship they gave me. It's about them giving me a race-based scholarship — a scholarship for having a black father instead of a scholarship for scholarship."

The suit was filed on behalf of Swanigan by the Center for Individual Rights, a conservative Washington, D.C. based non-profit that is known for high-profile anti-affirmative action cases.

Stephanie Reitz, spokeswoman for UConn said in an email that the university "will carefully review the contents of the filing and respond appropriately in our response in court."

The suit says that Swanigan had the strongest academic background in the pool of applicants for the program in the fall of 2009 and contends that those in charge of admissions, including Gregory Semenza, then-Director of Graduate Studies in the English department, were "worried that UConn would lose Ms. Swanigan to another university and wanted to convince Ms. Swanigan to enroll at UConn instead."

Semenza also said in another email sent to Swanigan in 2011 that she was "a stronger candidate that year than anyone," the suit says.

Swanigan says she was offered the "Vice Provost's Award" in an email from UConn on March 20, 2009. The email, quoted in the suit, says that the graduate school considers the vice provost award to be "a highly significant honor and recognizes this by providing an annual reception held for recipients."

Swanigan accepted UConn's offer, but two years into the program she discovered, when she wanted to leave campus and complete her dissertation in Canada, that she had not received the "vice provost's award." Instead, the suit contends, she learned that the vice provost award actually did not exist. She also had not received a merit-based fellowship known as the "Outstanding Scholars Program."

Swanigan contends that the merit-based awards would have allowed her to continue getting her fellowship, while completing her dissertation away from campus.

But she says, the award she did receive, through the "Multicultural Scholars Program' required that she stay on campus.

As relief, Swanigan has asked UConn to retroactively revoke the multicultural award and retroactively award her an "Outstanding Scholars Program award." She is also asking that the court to declare UConn's system of determining graduate school financial awards unconstitutional and to award her damages yet to be determined.