Congressmen to Investigate Boalt Hall Admissions Dispute

Two top Democrats in Congress on Tuesday launched an investigation of the U.S. Department of Education’s handling of complaints about admissions policies at Boalt Hall, the UC Berkeley law school.

Citing the department’s recent finding that the school’s affirmative action policies violated federal civil rights law, Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Donald M. Payne (D-N.J.) asked that voluminous documentation of the Berkeley case be sent to their committees. Conyers is chairman of the House Committee on Government Operations; Payne is chairman of the human resources and intergovernmental relations subcommittee.

The episode is part of an ongoing dispute about whether affirmative action policies are benefiting blacks and Latinos at the expense of Anglos and people of Asian origin.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach), who has prodded the education department to pursue related complaints against Berkeley and other UC campuses, has charged that Anglos and Asians are “being wounded” by preferences granted to other ethnic groups.

However, in a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander, Conyers and Payne said the conduct in the Boalt Hall case of the education department’s Office for Civil Rights “requires a thorough review.”

Last September, the law school agreed to change its admissions procedures after the Office for Civil Rights found violations of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The agency said that Boalt Hall was evaluating applications in separate racial groups and was not giving enough consideration to factors other than race and ethnicity in determining admission.

In a letter to Alexander, Rohrabacher asked that the request for documents in the Boalt Hall case not delay Office for Civil Rights investigations into alleged misuse of affirmative action at UCLA, UC Davis, UC San Diego and the School of Optometry at Berkeley.