Coalition Flunks UC on Efforts for Latinos

A coalition of Latino groups on Thursday issued a scathing “report card” on the University of California system, charging it has “failed” Latinos by systematically excluding them from student enrollment, faculty employment and top administrative posts.

The organizations “flunked” the university and its president, David Gardner, for, among other things, not having any Latinos among its 100 highest-paid administrators or on the staff of the Board of Regents.

They noted, for example, there currently is not a single Latino represented at or above the level of university vice president or vice chancellor. Tomas Rivera was the chancellor of UC Riverside until his death in 1984.

Additionally, the coalition said its investigation, based on data supplied by the university, found that while there have been increases in the number of Latino students and faculty over the last decade, the levels still are too low.

Moving away from the classroom, the groups claimed the university has also excluded Latino businesses from receiving private purchasing contracts, noting that Latino-owned businesses last year accounted for less than 1% of the university’s $747.7 million in outside contracts for services ranging from accounting to providing paper supplies.

Among the remedies recommended in the report are that the state freeze the salaries of Gardner and other high-ranking administrators; that the Legislature launch an investigation into whether Gardner should be replaced, and that the university be required to set strict five-year affirmative-action goals in the areas of enrollment, hiring and purchasing contracts.

And, in order to ensure that California’s 6 million Latinos become a top university priority, the coalition called for the development of a Latino Master Plan for the 21st Century.

The report was done by the San Francisco-based Latino Issues Forum, a nonprofit research group.

The findings, presented at a Capitol press conference, were supported by officials representing the Mexican American Political Assn.; the League of United Latin American Citizens; the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund; La Raza Lawyers Assn. of California and the American G.I. Forum.

“This is an issue of credibility and accountability between the university and the Hispanic community,” said Victor Cabral, an attorney representing the La Raza Lawyers Assn. “President Gardner has to be held accountable.”

Gardner was in Hawaii on Thursday on university business and could not be reached for comment.

But university spokesman Rick Malaspina said in a telephone interview from the president’s office in Berkeley: “The university has serious questions about the method and spirit with which these concerns were brought to our attention.”

Malaspina said no one at the university could specifically respond to the report’s charges or recommendations because the report had just been delivered and the university wanted time to study it in depth. But, he said, it is unfair “to represent the view that UC is indifferent or inattentive” in the area of affirmative action.

He defended Gardner, saying the university president had “stated on numerous occasions” his goal of increasing the number of “under-represented minorities, including Hispanics, into all aspects of the university.”

Pointing to the university’s enrollment figures, Malaspina said that from 1981 to 1987 the number of Latino undergraduates at the university’s nine campuses increased by 47%. As of last fall, Latinos accounted for about 8% of the university’s total undergraduate enrollment of 157,331, he said.