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| PASSIONATE PLEA:
In mid-October 1996, a few weeks before the vote on Proposition
209, these students marched
to an event in Revelle Plaza titled, “Mobilize against the Lies.” In
an emotional speech, Jesse Jackson addressed the large crowd that spilled out
beyond the plaza, declaring “We need a state that is color-caring not color
blind.” |
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The 1995 Regents’ mandate,
which abolished preferences, directed UC to achieve diversity “through
the preparation and empowerment of all students in this state to
succeed rather than through a system of artificial preferences.” UC
faculty and staff overhauled the old undergraduate admissions structure
to comply with the new realities, leaving some flexibility for
individual campuses to work out the details.
In 1999, the Regents approved the Eligibility in the Local Context,
or 4-percent plan. ELC grants UC admission to the top 4 percent of
graduating students in each California public high school—providing
they have successfully completed the core curriculum specified by
the University. Prior to ELC, students at disadvantaged schools were
failing to enroll in these qualifying courses for entrance and scholarships
at UC. “These kids would have been eligible all along if they
had taken the appropriate subjects, but no one was counseling them
in that regard,” says Atkinson.
Comprehensive Review, a 2001 innovation, substituted a more holistic
admissions policy for one that was strictly based on grades and test
scores. UCSD devised 12 criteria—half of which are nonacademic.
“If you had to take care of your mentally disabled brother, you
might get points for overcoming a personal challenge,” explains
Akos Rona-Tas, associate professor of sociology, who chairs the
Academic
Senate Committee on Admissions. Socioeconomic factors such as coming
from a low-income family or an underperforming high school are
also factored in. (For more on these criteria, see “Demystifying
Admissions” in the May 2004 issue of @UCSD magazine.
San Diego Padres owner and UC Regent John Moores is highly critical
of comprehensive review for its consideration of nonacademic factors.
To him, grades and test scores are the only criteria that ought
to matter. “I don’t give a damn whether the freshman class
is all Asian, if it’s all white, if it’s all black, or
if it’s all brown,” he told a San Diego Union-Tribune
reporter in January 2006.
Moores’ argument is a familiar one to Rona-Tas, who has heard
it many times. “It flounders on the fact that past performance
is not necessarily the best predictor of someone’s future performance
as a college student,” he says. That’s particularly true
when conditions such as poverty and racial discrimination come into
play. “We need a better way to identify underprivileged but
talented kids,” he reckons.
Since 1997, UC has partnered with community college officials to
encourage third-year transfers by qualified students—many of
them from economically disadvantaged communities. With the passage
of 209, UC reoriented its outreach efforts from race and ethnicity
to low-performing high schools where student academic performance
ranked in the bottom 20 percent of California high schools. And these
are the schools where African-American, Latino and Native-American
students are disproportionately represented.
Despite these efforts, “We don’t have a viable pipeline
for underrepresented groups,” says Brown, UCSD’s assistant
vice chancellor of admissions. “We had a strong commitment
to outreach programs, which we saw as a catalyst for increasing this
pipeline.”
However, hopes dimmed when the state slashed outreach dollars in
2004 to ease its budget crunch. While some of the money has been
restored, “We continue to struggle with increasing the applicant
pool minus the support of outreach programs that could have made
a difference,” says Brown.
* * *
Creating critical mass is a chicken-and-egg phenomenon. Campus
wide, UCSD has 18 faculty of color—and 209 bans quotas and
race-based hiring. A more diverse faculty might attract a more
diverse student body and vice versa, points out Dean of Social
Sciences Paul Drake.
When former Associated Students President Chris Sweeten, ’06,
entered UCSD in 2002, “I was the only black male in my dorm
and one of five at Sixth College,” he recalls. He is currently
heading up a student recruitment commission “to try to give
people of color encouragement to come here.”
It’s a tough sell job, Sweeten concedes. “Students
don’t see students who reflect upon them—and that’s
a problem.” Of the 313 African Americans who qualified for
acceptance in fall 2005, only 43 chose to attend. Aware of this,
the University introduced a new, black-studies minor this year.
The program is offered under the auspices of Thurgood Marshall
College and directed by Provost Robert Kluender, a linguistics
professor.
Within a qualified applicant pool that is small to begin with, “UCSD
competes with Stanford, Harvard and Yale for every superstar,” says
Jorge Huerta, professor of theatre, associate chancellor and chief
diversity officer.
As a stellar research university, UC shares Harvard’s mission
to educate people and create new knowledge. As a public institution, “We
have a third commitment—to serve all of society,” says
Dynes. “The privates don’t have that obligation.”
Should UC’s most prestigious campuses look like California?
Absolutely, Dynes believes. “Until somebody convinces me
that God didn’t give all races intelligence—and I’ve
seen no evidence for that—the lack of diversity means we
must be missing out on some intelligent kids who lack opportunity.”
Maybe it’s time to revisit California’s Master Plan
for Higher Education. Created in 1960, it promises access, quality
and affordability to any state resident in the top 12.5 percent
of the statewide high school graduating class. Only 15 percent
of high school grades attended college back then, compared with
more than 50 percent today. Atkinson, for one, favors a modest
increase in the 12.5 percentage.
Meanwhile, Supreme Court battles loom that could bar color and
ethnic-based preferences even at America’s top private universities.
National opinion polls suggest that policies based on economic
hardship rather than color or place-of-origin might go down more
easily with voters. A 2003 Los Angeles Times poll, for instance,
had 59 percent of Americans supporting economic affirmative action
and only 26 percent favoring racial preferences.
In the end, it’s a question of enlightened
self-interest, reckons Lytle. Diversity that doesn’t sacrifice
academic excellence beats “living in two or three Americas,” he
says. “We need to be selfish—but selfish in a civic
way. As a parent, I’m concerned about the quality of thought
of the kid who’s driving on the freeway next to my daughter.” 
Sylvia Tiersten is a freelance writer based in San Diego.
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