UC Regents, Officials Wrangle Over Details of New Admission Criteria

Eight months after the University of California Board of Regents voted to roll back affirmative action, officials are still grappling with the same fundamental question that prompted the divisive debate: What criteria should be used to admit undergraduates?

Now that race and gender preferences have been struck down, effective for students enrolling in spring 1998, administrators are struggling to draft a new policy to guide the nine UC campuses as they evaluate applicants.

On Thursday, a draft proposal came before the board and the regents’ discussion revealed lingering tensions over the issue. Regent Ward Connerly, who spearheaded UC’s ban on race and gender preferences, peppered UC officials with questions designed, he said, to make sure that the guidelines stay true to the board’s vote.

“I certainly hope we are not going to limit or enhance or suppress anyone’s opportunity to attend the university by modeling techniques or other efforts to find surrogates for race,” Connerly said at one point.

Regent Ralph Carmona, who opposed the affirmative action ban, responded: “Well, I certainly hope that we would recognize the reality that you have a large number of students who, by virtue of race or ethnicity, are not a part of this university and that we would take that into account.”

In July, when regents voted to no longer consider race and gender as criteria in admissions, hiring and contracting decisions, they called on administrators to ensure that the UC population still reflects the state’s diversity.

That may be an impossible task: In December, a task force charged with solving the problem reported that without racial preferences the student body would probably become less diverse. Under the regents’ resolution, the nine UC campuses will be required to admit at least 50% and no more than 75% of their students on the basis of academic achievement alone. The supplemental factors under consideration would be used to help select the remaining 25% to 50% of students from the pool of qualified applicants.

All students who rank in the top 12.5% of the state’s high school graduates are assured a place at one of the UC campuses. But among those students, there is competition for slots at UC Berkeley and UCLA.

The draft guidelines submitted to the board Thursday spelled out several supplemental factors to be considered in addition to academic achievement. As has been true for years, they include personal traits, experiences and circumstances that show an applicant’s promise, including musical or athletic ability, language proficiency, significant community service or completion of special projects.

One new proposal would give favorable consideration to students who have an “interest in other cultures,” the draft said. Asked to clarify what this meant, Dennis Galligani, UC’s assistant vice president for academic and student services, said the intent was to encourage students to challenge themselves academically.

“Are we talking about students who’ve gone skiing in Switzerland? No, that’s not what we’re talking about,” Galligani said, adding that pursuits such as participating in a foreign language club or studies abroad would be viewed favorably.

Other factors recognize obstacles students may have overcome, such as disabilities, low family income, refugee status or simply being the first in a family to attend college. The draft guidelines also include a new consideration for applicants with “disadvantaged social or educational environment, [or] difficult personal and family situations or circumstances.”

The draft report included a geographic component, which would continue preferences for students from parts of the state that are underrepresented. Connerly said that policy bothered him because the reasoning behind it is similar to that used with race: The preference was created in part to boost the numbers of an underrepresented group.

“It bothers me, but it is tolerable,” Connerly concluded, “because it is not determined by race. If you know they’re giving preferences to those in the Central Valley, you can always move to the Central Valley. But you can’t change your sex or your race” in order to get a preference.

Lt. Gov. Gray Davis said that while the guidelines are important, they won’t matter much unless the pool of minority applicants to UC can be expanded.

“The larger message that is emanating from this controversy is the welcome mat is not out for qualified students who happen to be minorities,” Davis said. “Like Talmudic scholars, we can argue to add a phrase here or drop a comma there, but we want this public university to be every bright student’s dream.”

The final admissions guidelines will be distributed to the campuses by May, UC President Richard C. Atkinson told the board.

Later, in what has become a frequent event at regents’ meetings, nine students were arrested for disrupting the peace and resisting arrest. The fracas erupted when regents voted 10 to 3 to postpone indefinitely their consideration of a proposal to rescind the ban on race and gender preferences in UC admissions.

The recision proposal was identical to one made in January, and the board acted Thursday just as it had two months ago. Nevertheless, the students--all from UC Berkeley--stormed the front of the meeting room, tumbled down some stairs and landed in a heap in front of the regents’ table.

As police handcuffed the students and led them away, the audience chanted, “No justice, no peace!” and yelled epithets at Connerly. At one point, Connerly talked back to the crowd, saying, “My spine is sufficient to sit here and listen to you folks. I wish you had equal spine. You should be civil.”