New debate on UC race preference New debate on UC race preference
Regents likely will approve a compromise that doesn't repeal but 'replaces' the ban on affirmative action
By Carrie Sturrock Contra Costa TIMES STAFF WRITER
May 13, 2001
After years of student protests and pressure from the state Legislature, the University of California regents plan this week to reconsider their ban on affirmative action. Policy makers and educators around the nation will be watching. This is the governing body that kicked off the national debate with its 1995 ban on racial preferences in admissions, a precursor to California voters outlawing most state-sponsored affirmative action with Proposition 209 the following year.
Since then, Washington state has banned affirmative action and a federal appeals court has outlawed it in university admissions in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Ultimately, the course the rest of the country takes on affirmative action in university admissions will be decided in the U.S. Supreme Court, observers say. And many believe the court likely will take up cases involving the University of Michigan undergraduate program and its law school.
With the high court closely divided on affirmative action, opponents and advocates are amassing evidence of where they think it has failed and succeeded. For that reason, what the UC regents do, although largely symbolic considering state law still bans affirmative action, could impact the national debate. "California is important because it has been a kind of national experiment," said Michigan law school dean Jeffrey Lehman. "It has given the rest of the country a chance to see the impact of mandating a rigid, colorblind approach to admissions." How the UC regents phrase their action Wednesday, and how both sides spin it, also will have an impact.
Most likely, the regents will approve a compromise that doesn't repeal but "replaces" the ban with a resolution that affirms the board's commitment to obeying Prop. 209 and notes that some students are proud of being admitted on their accomplishments, not their race. A draft of the resolution states the university will seek out and enroll a student body that "encompasses the broad diversity of backgrounds characteristic of California."
And it says the academic senate will review a policy implemented along with the ban that mandates the university admit no less than 50 percent and no more than 75 percent of applicants on academic criteria alone. If that were eliminated, the university could be more comprehensive in its admissions process and pay greater attention to essays, leadership, socio-economic background and special circumstances, the draft says. Since the ban, African-American, Latino and American Indian enrollment has dropped systemwide -- most significantly at the university's prestigious campuses. Regent Bill Bagley, who has long called for simply repealing the ban, endorses the compromise, as does Regent Ward Connerly, who chaired the Prop. 209 campaign.
The resolution simply reaffirms the university's commitment to colorblind admissions, Connerly says, and he supports it in part to quiet the student protesters who attend regents' meetings. "As long as the convictions I hold are being preserved and I'm being true to those, there's nothing wrong with me reaching out and saying 'What do you want? and 'What concerns you?'" State lawmakers have been pressuring the regents to reverse their course. Last week the Legislature approved a resolution calling on the UC regents to repeal the ban.
That's what student Regent Justin Fong wants to do. The university, he said, needs to send a strong welcoming message to minority groups that are underrepresented on UC campuses. "It's a whispering welcome at best," he said of the compromise. "It's a very weak message." But others see the compromise as an admission that the regents made a mistake when they banned racial preferences. "I think people will get the message that you don't restate a policy that's working," said Ted Wong of Chinese for Affirmative Action in San Francisco.
"You don't revisit a policy that's effective. You revisit it when it's causing harm." Since 1997, the year before the ban went into effect, enrollment of California's underrepresented minorities has decreased from 18 percent of the freshman class systemwide to 16.5 percent in 2000, although that's up 1.5 percentage points from 1998. Some argue that the regents' decision alone discouraged prospective minority candidates from applying: in 1995, minorities made up 21 percent of the freshman class.
At UC Berkeley the percentage of underrepresented minorities in the entire freshman class dropped from 24 percent in 1995 to 21 percent in 1997 to 13 percent in 2000. The university system has spent hundreds of millions on outreach efforts that officials say are improving diversity. Systemwide, the percentage of minorities admitted -- not enrolled -- for the fall 2001 freshman class has nearly reached affirmative action levels at 18.6 percent, just shy of the 18.8 percent admitted in 1997. Universities across the country are watching those numbers.
They're also watching what happens at the University of Michigan. The U.S. District Court in Detroit upheld the undergraduate affirmative action program in December, but a different judge on the same court in March ruled unconstitutional the law school's race-conscious admissions system. Many observers believe the Michigan cases will send the issue of race-conscious university admissions policies back to the U.S. Supreme Court for the first time since 1978.
The contradictory court decisions are rooted in different interpretations of that year's Supreme Court decision in University of California Regents vs. Bakke. The 5-4 decision struck down the Davis medical school's admissions policy, but said universities could take race into account as one of several factors in choosing applicants. Justice Lewis Powell ended a deadlock by agreeing with the two sides of the court on different issues. But he was the only one to characterize diversity as a clearly "constitutionally permissible goal for an institution of higher education" -- the argument on which universities have based their admissions decisions.
The Center for Individual Rights, the Washington, D.C., organization that brought the Michigan lawsuits on behalf of white applicants who had been rejected, sees the UC regents' compromise resolution as an affirmation of Prop. 209. "This will give people the sense that the momentum is still against racial preferences," said Curt Levy, director of legal and public affairs. "Most people see the handwriting on the wall -- that maybe this was something necessary 30 years ago but that now it's counterproductive to achieving a colorblind society."
Student protesters who have long called on the UC regents to repeal the affirmative action ban have called the compromise weak, but a victory nonetheless. "No matter what the language is, this is a victory," said Ronald Cruz, a UC Berkeley student with the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and Integration, and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary. How it impacts the national debate may not be clear right away. But one thing is for sure, Regent Fong said: "This whole debate is because people are watching."
Carrie Sturrock covers higher education. Reach her at 925-943-8155 or csturrock@cctimes.com.
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