Black and Hispanic Admissions Off Sharply at U. of California
Black and Hispanic Admissions Off Sharply at U. of CaliforniaBy ETHAN BRONNER
BERKELEY, Calif., March 31 - In a demonstration of the impact of California's referendum that banned the use of race and ethnicity in college admissions, the state's most competitive public universities today announced steep drops in admissions of black and Hispanic applicants for next fall's freshman class.
At the University of California at Berkeley, the most selective public university in the country, African-Americans, Hispanic Americans and American Indians together made up 10.4 percent of the total pool of admitted freshmen for 1998; in 1997, they made up 23.1 percent. At the University of California at Los Angeles, minority representation fell to 12.7 percent, from 19.8 percent last year.
"My own personal emotions are a mixture of disappointment, anger, frustration, hope and resolve," a grim-faced Robert M. Berdahl, Berkeley's chancellor, said at a news conference today. "To the extent this leaves us a less diverse campus, it diminishes us."
Some opponents of affirmative action said they too were disturbed by the drop-off, but only because, they said, it proved their point that the school systems had been failing to prepare black and Hispanic applicants properly while the university system had been discriminating against whites and Asians.
"We shouldn't become obsessed with the year-to-year numbers," said Terence J. Pell, senior counsel of the Washington-based Center for Individual Rights, which has brought many cases against affirmative action to courts around the country.
"It is clear it will take a few years for the system to adjust," Mr. Pell said. "Diversity is important. The challenge is how to get it without focusing on skin color."
The figures are among the first on admissions to California state universities since Proposition 209 was passed in November 1996. The ballot initiative which for undergraduate admissions went into effect this year, made California the only state to ban the consideration of race, ethnicity and sex in the public sector.
A Federal appeals court has forbidden the state universities of Texas to do the same, and other states, notably Michigan, are facing similar legal challenges. To avoid a large drop in minority admissions, the Texas Legislature required the top 10 percent of graduating seniors from each school to be admitted.
While the California referendum also barred the consideration of sex, admissions officials said they had never taken sex into account anyway because of the large number of women applying to college.
The data released today mirror similar drops in most of the smaller University of California campuses announced two weeks ago and at the state's business and law schools.
It is still unclear what percentage of next fall's freshman classes will consist of minorities, since the applicants, of all races, have yet to choose where they will go and many will probably be able to go to the smaller state campuses.
The two campuses that are known to be least selective, Riverside and Santa Cruz, reported increases in minority admissions. Moreover, the very top candidates may choose pri-vate institutions like Harvard and Stanford, where many may have also been admitted.
The percentage of Asian-Ameri-cans, who are not considered an un-der-represented minority in Califor-nia, increased slightly. Asians ac-count for 38.3 percent of freshman admissions at Berkeley this year, up from 35.5 percent last year. At U.C.L.A. they account for 33 percent, a 0.8 percentage-point increase from last year.
Mr. Berdahl, the Berkeley Chancel-lor, and Albert Carnesale, U.C.L.A. chancellor, both said at separate news conferences today that they would try to Persuade the minority members admitted to attend their universities and not leave the system or the state for other institutions.
They said they were concerned that the number of students attending would fall further from those admitted because those minority members offered a slot at these cam-puses are the very top performing students sought after by colleges everywhere. Both Chancellors said they fear a chilling effect on the attitude of future high school seniors toward California's best state campuses.
"Now the challenge before us is, despite this drop in admission in under-represented Minorities, to get the highest possible enrollment so we can maintain the diversity of this campus,Ó Chancellor Carnesale said. "This is the academically strongest class in U.C.L.A. history. We re-ceived more applications than any university in the United States and probably more than any in the World."
Together, Berkeley and U.C.L.A. account for nearly 46,000 Of some 129,000 undergraduates spread across eight campuses. As the desirability of the two schools has increased, they have been able to choose from among the very top students. Now, as applications from all racial groups are increasing, there is concern that black and Hispanic faces will disappear from the two key campuses and increase at the less desirable ones.
In anticipation of a sharp drop in minority admissions, Berkeley officials said, they overhauled their admission procedures, relying less on grade point averages and scores on standardized tests like the S.A.T. and more on essays and a mix of criteria like whether the applicant had overcome difficult barriers
Some officials said they had postulated that by taking into account other factors, like individuality, as well as low socio-economic status, the number of black and Hispanic students would remain high. But Bob Laird, director of undergraduate admissions at Berkeley, said that a large number of low-income whites and Asians also overcame such barriers so it did not especially benefit minorities.
The same is true at U.C.L.A., where such an admission system has been in place for 15 years, according to Jeffrey Hirsch, director of university relations there.
ÒThe fact is that lots of the blacks we admit are middle class, second and third-generation in college while many of the Asian-Americans are poor," he said.
At Berkeley, the mood at the lush campus, covered in budding sycamore trees, seemed a mix of resignation and anger. "It sends a strong message that this school is going to cater to a certain population and not open itself to the diverse population that is out there," said Marisa L. Galvan, a senior who is Mexican-American. ÒEliminating affirmative action did-n't solve any problems. It only created new ones.Ó
Some students and professors suggested that the university consider breaking the law to maintain its diversity.
Across the country, where the California situation is being carefully watched, supporters of affirmative action said they were not surprised by the numbers. They expressed depression and fury.
"We are seeing these campuses returning to a race-exclusive status,Ó said Theodore M. Shaw, associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. "This shows that economics will not substitute for race. We know that the great majority of the poor are white. You know, it is pretty depressing when you think that this is 30 years, almost to the day, after the assassination of Martin Luther King and we're still fighting a battle, we thought we had moved beyond.Ó
High school seniors affected by the new system had varying reactions to the new numbers. Most had not yet received their letters from either U.C.L.A. or Berkeley and so did not yet know where they stood, but were worried.
In Castlemont High School in East Oakland, Charles E. Jones, 18, an African-American and student body president, said he was frustrated be. cause he felt he had got all he could out of high school, taking all of the three advanced placement courses offered by the school, earning a grade point average of 3.67 out of a possible 4.0 and S.A.T.'s of 1100.
He said there was often a shortage of books and other resources there. He was waiting nervously to hear from both Berkeley and U.C.L.A. and had already been disappointed by rejection from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
"The U.C. schools need to take into account what it is like going to school. here," he said. "Because of my family situation, I spend a lot of time baby-sitting. Kids at Other schools are doing the extracurricular activi-ties that help them get into college." A classmate, Gabriel Escobar, 18, a Mexican-American, said he had already been accepted to the Univer-sity of California at Davis and U.C. Santa Barbara but was waiting to hear from Berkeley. "Since I was a little kid I've want-ed to go to Berkeley," he said. "With affirmative action gone, part of me wishes I was born a little earlier. There are people with much worse grades who got in last year. But it's going to be harder for me."
One Los Angeles high school senior, Maria Prado, has been accepted by Santa Barbara but rejected by San Diego and U.C.L.A.
ÒI think that taking away affirmative action has hurt me in a way," she said. "But in a way, I think it is better because they don't emphasize who you are but what you can do."
At San Francisco's Abraham Lincoln High School, Amy S. Cheung, a 17-year-old Asian-American, said she was waiting to hear from U.C.L.A. and Berkeley and, like many Americans, had mixed feelings about affirmative action.
ÒI don't think it's fair to look at people as a whole group," she said. ÒLooking at them as a race and giving them benefits because of that race doesn't make any sense. But I don't want to go into a classroom where everyone is Asian. What I like about living in California is that you get to know different types of people. That's the one thing that's good about America."
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Carl
Gutierrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu