UC Chief Revises Preferences Plan

In a clarification that sounds like a partial retreat, University of California President Richard Atkinson announced Thursday that the ban on race- and gender-based preferences in admissions will take effect without delay in graduate and professional school admissions, affecting students who enroll in fall 1997.

But the delay on undergraduate admissions will remain in effect, Atkinson said.

In a letter to his nine chancellors, Atkinson first restated what he had told Gov. Pete Wilson the day before: The affirmative action ban has been postponed for undergraduate admissions and will first apply to applicants for the fall 1998 term. But at the graduate level, he wrote, the original timetable can be used.

“The decentralized nature of the [graduate admissions] process means there are fewer complications than . . . at the undergraduate level,” the brief letter said.

Coming as it did one day after the governor summoned Atkinson to express his strong opposition to the delay, the announcement was viewed by some as a compromise.

But some members of the UC Board of Regents, which voted in July to ban race and gender preferences in admissions, hiring and contracting, said they saw Thursday’s letter as little more than a technical adjustment that will affect a relatively small number of students. Every year, about 9,600 new graduate and professional students enroll in UC schools, compared to 32,300 new undergraduates.

“It’s a refinement,” said Regent Bill Bagley. “Somebody took a look at the graduate schools and said, ‘Hell, we can do it because we don’t have to cover all the high school counselors in the state.’ That makes sense.”

UC officials contend that the admissions process for undergraduates is complicated and requires early distribution of admissions materials to guidance counselors around the state. At the UC graduate schools, there are many fewer applications and those are handled by the individual academic departments, not by a central office.

It remained unclear how the standoff between Atkinson and the governor over the delay for undergraduate applications would be resolved. Late in the day, Wilson met with Regent Ward Connerly, a close confidant who spearheaded the rollback of affirmative action in the UC system. An aide acknowledged that the flap over UC admissions policies was on their agenda.

But because Atkinson stood his ground, many said it is now up to Wilson to decide whether to take action to force the issue.

And some regents said they see no way Wilson could effectively lash back at Atkinson, short of pushing for his resignation or cutting the university’s funding--both of which could be seen as unduly harsh.

“In this instance there’s nothing to do,” Bagley said. “The governor can get a little perturbed at the president, but that’s not going to affect any substantive matter like funding.”

Another regent who asked not to be named put it more bluntly.

“What can he do? He’s given the regents a good budget, and if he backed off on that the world would know he was punishing students” because he was mad at Atkinson, the regent said.