Admission Policy at UC Berkeley

As a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, I must respond to Prof. Stephen Barnett’s article (“Who Gets In? A Troubling Policy,” Commentary, June 11) criticizing the university’s policy of affirmative action and its commitment to the principles of ethnic and socioeconomic diversity.

While Barnett may find the demographic changes among Berkeley’s student population “troubling,” I found the experience of learning amid Berkeley’s unparalleled racial diversity exhilarating. Racial issues are ever at the forefront of campus debate, which is not only to be expected but, I would argue, is to be desired. Recent events in Los Angeles--and in Miami, New York and everywhere else racial tensions have erupted--attest to the need for an open and painstaking dialogue about our differences, and our commonalities.

Berkeley is well ahead of other educational institutions on that score, and only because of conscientious admissions policies that recognize the importance of criteria other than strictly academic ones, as Barnett would prefer. To say that Berkeley’s academic quality has suffered as a result is ridiculous; the school’s top ranking among nationwide academic surveys disproves such a contention.

UC Berkeley has, above all, expanded the definition of what a “quality education” entails. Its commitment to ethnic and socioeconomic diversity shows that it seeks to be an institution engaged with the problems facing California and the rest of the country.

DENNIS VILLACORTE

Pomona