Campus Correspondent : Will the ‘Berkeley Pledge’ Revive Affirmative Action?

Journalists who come to UC Berkeley looking for protesters against the UC Board of Regents’ decision to end race-based admissions are usually disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, the protesters are here. This is still Berkeley. But since school started in August, most of the demonstrations are sparsely attended, with reporters often outnumbering activists.

I am often asked by these reporters to explain the lack of opposition to the regents’ new policy. There is only one likely explanation: most of the students actually agree with the regents.

No one has conducted a scientific poll to determine what UC Berkeley students think of abolishing race-based affirmative action at the nine University of California campuses. But the mail received by the student newspaper suggests a semi-opinionated but apathetic student body that isn’t very militant on either side.

Perhaps this is because race-based affirmative action is an outdated way of judging students. Currently, when black and Latino students apply to UC Berkeley, they are categorized by the admissions committee as disadvantaged, regardless of whether they live in South Central Los Angeles or Encino. In UC admissions, when it comes down to a choice between two applicants of equal merit, the middle-class black student is admitted to Berkeley while the low-income Asian or white student is directed to UCLA or UCI.

For years, affirmative action divided the races, forcing members of each ethnicity to battle each other for those coveted admission letters. And it’s the truly deserving minority and white students who are the victims of race-based admissions. When the program was first instituted at Berkeley in 1964, race was a good way to judge who was needy and who was not. Today, race-based admissions assume too much and these assumptions are neither necessary nor fair.

The UC regents wisely recognized that affirmative action penalized the truly deserving minority and white students. By dismantling the old policies and implementing a new socioeconomic system, they are creating opportunity for those who truly need it: California’s growing low-income population.

The affirmative action of the next century will work to bridge the widening gap between the rich and poor of this state. Giving a boost to a student whose parents don’t have the money to buy an extra 100 SAT points through an expensive prep course is a worthy way to deal with the relationship between money and educational opportunity. And it has nothing to do with race.

While UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien has always been one of the country’s most ardent supporters of race-based affirmative action, he must now preside over the implementation of the regents’ new policies. Last week, he announced an ambitious multimillion-dollar outreach program, dubbed the Berkeley Pledge, to increase the number of underprivileged applicants to the university.

On the surface, Tien’s program seems a great way to encourage inner-city kids to study hard and apply to college. But knowing Tien’s commitment to racial diversity, I fear he will not truly implement the Berkeley Pledge but will instead narrow his outreach to those minority groups he feels an obligation to.

But poor students come in every color, especially the large number of low-income Asian immigrants who must compete in the most difficult racial category for admission. The regents acknowledged this when they encouraged outreach programs for poor children who show potential, regardless of race. The purpose of the Berkeley Pledge should be to facilitate the success of all underprivileged students.

California is in the most critical stage of a noble experiment--one that is being watched closely across the nation. Admission based on need is the first step in promoting an educational environment in which all students will be judged by who they are and what opportunities life has given them, not by the color of their skin. I can’t think of a loftier goal.