Affirmative Action Battle Builds : Education: ‘The mother of all regents meetings’ will be held in two weeks as a deeply divided board prepares to consider changes in UC admissions and hiring policies.

After simmering for months, the debate over affirmative action at the University of California is about to come to a boil.

Two weeks from today, the UC Board of Regents will meet in San Francisco to consider proposals to alter current admissions and hiring policies to end what one regent calls “race-based decision-making” at UC.

That regent, Ward Connerly, has urged the board for months to abolish race- and gender-based preferences, and on Wednesday he made public a proposal that would prohibit the use of race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin as criteria in UC’s hiring and contracting practices as of Jan. 1, 1996.

The proposal would extend that prohibition to university admissions one year later, although Connerly said race and other supplemental factors could be considered when applicants could prove the factors had been a barrier to success.

“If you happen to be someone who has overcome some obstacle, then it’s appropriate for [admissions officers] to weigh that in the equation,” said Connerly, who also called for more funding for “outreach” efforts that seek to increase the numbers of black and Latino students who are eligible for UC, where they are underrepresented.

The release of Connerly’s long-awaited proposals sets the stage for what one regent jokingly calls “the mother of all regents meetings” July 20. Already, the Rev. Jesse Jackson has made plans to address the board that day to defend affirmative action. And several regents say they intend to do the same.

Regent Ralph C. Carmona--a Chicano who is a proud beneficiary of affirmative action programs--has written to the board urging that it postpone its vote indefinitely in order to ensure thorough discussion of the facts. Student Regent Ed Gomez has indicated that he will propose that affirmative action programs be expanded, not scaled back.

And a new voice will be heard: Regent-designate Richard Russell, a black attorney with offices in Pasadena who says he sees the coming meeting--his first as a regent--as an opportunity to challenge Connerly, who is also black.

“I feel obligated to speak up,” said Russell, a graduate of UC Berkeley who describes himself as one of UC’s “affirmative action success stories.” Connerly, Russell said, “has been able to frankly use his race and his position to establish a bully pulpit. . . . No one’s said, ‘Well, wait a minute.’ But I will.”

Since he first raised the issue earlier this year, Connerly has been by far the most outspoken regent on the issue of race- and gender-based preferences. It was at his suggestion that the board undertook a review of UC’s affirmative action policies, during which several UC officials warned that to alter the policies would risk declines in minority enrollment.

In a letter that Connerly sent to board Chairman Clair W. Burgener last week, however, he suggested that without changes, the university’s “de facto racial quotas” make it vulnerable to lawsuits.

“We are breaking the law and we are a prime target for a major class-action suit if there is anyone out there who is willing to spend the time to gather the necessary data to prove the case,” wrote Connerly, a Sacramento land-use consultant.

University officials say Connerly is mistaken. None of the university’s policies are clearly unlawful, said James Holst, UC general counsel.

But Holst said he has also advised the regents that they would be less vulnerable to legal challenges if the university conducted a more thorough evaluation of all applicants.

Currently, the regents require the university’s nine campuses to enroll a student body that represents the cultural, racial, economic and social diversity of California. Admission decisions are made based upon academic criteria as well as geographic location, ethnicity, gender and special talents or experience. No student is supposed to be admitted on the basis of race alone.

Some regents have questioned whether middle-class minorities truly need affirmative action programs.

But Russell, the new black appointee, indicated that he will oppose any measure to circumscribe affirmative action by income. “My children have a lot of opportunity, but I’m not sure they have the same opportunity as the kids who live next door,” Russell said. “They are among a few specks of pepper within a sea of salt. And that’s a tough way to go. Maybe the regents aren’t in touch with those sorts of issues yet.”

As a designate, Russell may participate in discussions but not vote. Still, some regents say that Russell’s voice will carry some weight, particularly because he is a black alumnus of UC.

“He’s a black man who has benefited from affirmative action who is not ashamed to say it,” Carmona said.

On Wednesday, Carmona’s proposal to postpone the affirmative action vote was endorsed by Regent William T. Bagley, a San Rafael attorney and former state Assembly member who said it would be foolish to take a position before the November, 1996, election, when voters are expected to consider at least one initiative that seeks to prohibit race-based preferences.

“If we adopt an absolute no-race criterion prior to the election, the regents will be used as fodder in that campaign,” Bagley said. “We should not be on record one way or the other.”

As Connerly’s proposals made the rounds, however, some regents expressed support, particularly for his recommendation that the university increase the ratio of students admitted solely on the basis of academic achievement to between 50% and 75%. Currently, the university admits 40% to 60% on academic criteria alone, with the remainder admitted on both scholastic and supplemental factors.

“Ward’s position has merit . . . [and] I’m inclined to support him,” said Regent S. Stephen Nakashima, a San Jose lawyer. Nakashima, a Japanese American, said he had suffered racial discrimination in 1942, when his family was forced to enter an internment camp, and in 1948, when he graduated from UC Berkeley and could not find an accounting job because employers said “corporate clients would be uneasy having a Japanese auditing their books.”

Nevertheless, Nakashima said he thinks UC’s policies are due for a change. Had there been affirmative action in the 1940s, he noted, he would have become an accountant instead of continuing his studies and becoming an attorney.

“Because of the fact that there was no affirmative action, I said, ‘The hell with it, I’m going to go out and better myself,’ ” he said. “Here’s an example of benefiting from the fact that there was no affirmative action. That’s my personal experience.”

Regent Glenn Campbell, director emeritus of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said Connerly’s proposals appear to be “a great improvement over the quota system we have now.”

Campbell rejected the idea that the regents should wait to take a stand. “What are we going to do? Hide behind somebody until it’s all settled?” he said.

Regent John G. Davies, an attorney and confidant of Gov. Pete Wilson, agreed that the regents should make a decision soon.

“I’m inclined to believe we should get on with it and decide one way or the other,” Davies said.

Wilson, who is a voting member of the Board of Regents, has made affirmative action a central target of his fledgling presidential bid. Paul Kranhold, a Wilson spokesman, said Wednesday that the governor has made no plans to attend the July 20 regents meeting.

Regent Meredith J. Khachigian, a community volunteer from San Clemente, said she is still struggling to decide how affirmative action can balance “the positives--opening up the pipeline of opportunity--and the negatives--the unfairness and the reverse discrimination.”

She applauded Connerly for trying to preserve fairness in admissions policies, but questioned the practical implications of his plan, particularly his proposal to assess whether each individual applicant has overcome racial or other obstacles.

“How do you quantify that? To be able to prove that almost requires a home visit,” she said, noting that now UC applicants do not all receive interviews, let alone visits. Connerly’s proposals, she acknowledged, would probably be expensive to implement.

“As far as manpower and being able to afford it and hiring enough people to do that, that’s certainly an open question,” she said.

Students, meanwhile, vowed to attend the next regents’ meeting in record numbers to oppose Connerly. Glenn Magpantay, executive director of the UC Student Assn., which represents student governments on the nine UC campuses, called Connerly’s proposals “an abomination.”

“I’m saddened that logic, the truth, the facts don’t have a bearing in how Connerly came to his decision,” he said, adding that he took special exception to Connerly’s description of UC admissions policies as “race-based.”

“We don’t have ‘race-based’ anything,” he said. “Students, community members and clergy members are looking to turn out in force.”

But Connerly has apparently anticipated such public pressure, and warned regent Chairman Burgener in his letter not to “cave in to student threats” and sidestep the issue. “If we refuse to act out of fear of student protests, if we let the students intimidate us by threatening to ‘shut the place down,’ then we have just created a formula for the students to prevail on any issue,” he wrote. “ . . . We can be held hostage any time.”

Connerly also made it clear that he does not believe faculty should be consulted before the board makes a decision on affirmative action. And, in an apparent slap at UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young, he criticized a new course UCLA is offering on the history of affirmative action.

“Some of our administrators have actively stirred student emotions on this issue as a tool for preserving the status quo,” Connerly wrote. “There was no academic need to rush the approval of an affirmative action course at UCLA, and we all know it. Frankly, I don’t know why such a course was needed at all.”