UC System Admissions Policies

As a 1990 graduate of UCLA I felt compelled to respond to the University of California admissions policy articles (“Should UC Admissions Set Ethnic and Racial Goals?” Opinion, July 1). John H. Bunzel (“Standards Must Remain High”) is right on target while Raymond Paredes (“UC Diversity Critical Goal”) perpetuates the ever-growing cycle of reverse discrimination prevalent at UCLA. As Bunzel states, the minority students are exactly those who drop out despite special enrollment and tutoring privileges.

These students who are clearly less academically qualified and often prove themselves scholastically incompetent at the university level are being chosen over white and Asian students with 4.0 grade point averages who are exactly the people who graduate due to their drive to succeed. It is a crime that qualified students are being turned away due to their race.

Paredes assumes all whites are rich and privileged while all Latinos are poor and deserving of special treatment. This is blatantly false. People of all races span the gamut of wealth. The admissions system should help students of poverty overcome their hardship regardless of race. Excellent students of all racial and economic backgrounds should be sought. UC admission should be a search for those motivated to succeed and be the future leaders.

UCLA has become a racial battleground due to the UC system’s pandering to minorities. They get special treatment on entry, while enrolled and on entry to graduate school. When does it stop? When is the UC system going to strive for excellence and stop lowering academic standards in order to obtain the so-called correct proportion of minorities? What happened to our values of individualism and self-determination or are these too destroyed in the name of diversity?

LISA M. HATTON

Los Angeles