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A key challenge for positive discrimination policymakers is negotiating institutional distance. In day-to-day activities it is necessary to fix the duration and the scope of preferential treatment aimed at victims of discrimination and of social inequality. This article reports on the issue of institutional distance in an Argentinian positive discrimination program aimed at rural youngsters from the Huarpe native people. In this University of Cuyo program, preferential treatment – an essential aspect of positive discrimination – is made up of actions more similar to care than to learning support. By analyzing my audiovisual recordings, I conclude that with regard both to interaction and to the institution, the participants’ experience of the program is structured around a fundamental principle. The program’s routine uses the creation of “interaction switching” which allows teachers to reduce the distance between themselves and these scholarship-students at any time, while retaining the possibility of returning to standard institutional distance.