Some Regents Seek UCLA Admissions Priority for Friends

Several University of California regents who voted publicly to roll back affirmative action admissions for minorities and women have privately used their influence to try to get their relatives, friends and children of business partners into UCLA, in some cases ahead of better qualified applicants who were turned away, a months-long Times investigation shows.

Confidential documents reviewed by The Times also show that Gov. Pete Wilson--the political force behind the anti-affirmative action movement who used the university’s controversial board vote last year to boost his presidential aspirations--made two casual requests as well.

Other top state officials, including state Sen. Ken Maddy (R-Fresno) and former Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, a Democrat, sought favors at UCLA through what has long been a back channel into the university for the state’s well-known and powerful.

In all, The Times’ investigation documented hundreds of requests made to the Westwood campus through the back door during the last 15 years by more than 80 former and current public officials. These requests were either made directly to top UCLA officials or relayed by UC’s Sacramento lobbyist, Stephen A. Arditti, records show.

“Anyone in prominence who has made a recommendation--a school principal, a legislator--those carry weight,” said Regent Ralph Carmona, contrasting the way the VIP requests were handled with the university’s recent decision to shelve affirmative action.

“People who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are blacks and Latinos, don’t have that kind of weight to carry,” said Carmona, who is a supporter of affirmative action. “And we’ve got to recognize that.”

The cases examined by The Times show that not all back channel requests were successful and, in many cases, the applicants recommended by regents and others were academically competitive even without help.

In one instance, a regent tried to influence a student’s admission on behalf of a legislator who had just helped the university defeat a bill, records show. The regent tied the legislative action to his admission request in a remarkably candid letter addressed to UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young.

Chancellor Denies Favoritism

Regents involved in the requests said in interviews this week that they were merely passing on letters of recommendation to the highly competitive Westwood campus, where thousands of UC-qualified students are turned away each year, including those with perfect grade-point averages.

But some of them acknowledged Friday that their behind-the-scenes actions may appear to be unfair.

“I agree, no, it isn’t always fair,” said Regent Meredith Khachigian, who, records show, intervened on behalf of her daughter and another Orange County student in 1989.

“But at the same time, I think that it’s anyone’s responsibility, if you think that something should have happened that didn’t happen . . . [to] call and find out why. I didn’t insist she be accepted. I inquired. As any parent could or should.”

University officials concede that they give requests from the regents and other top officials “personal” service. UCLA’s Young said his administration responds to special requests for housing and campus parking but not for admissions.

“Am I aware of any instances where people have tried to pull strings? Yes,” Young said Friday. “Am I aware of times when people tried to pull strings and got somebody in? No.

“Am I aware of times when regents said, ‘Oh, my nephew is applying for next year. Would you please see to it that people are aware of that? And give it special attention? Yes.

“I don’t think that means admit them,” the chancellor said. “I know the admissions office would not interpret it that way. It would mean that they would make sure the people involved would take a look at it.”

But in other cases records show that the students whose names were forwarded by officials had academic records below the school’s rigorous cutoff standard, were headed for rejection or had already been turned down. In some of these cases, the political inquiries had dramatic effects.

The regents involved in some of these requests were among the majority who voted last July to strip race and gender considerations from undergraduate admissions--criteria designed to give a boost particularly to blacks and Latinos, who are underrepresented in the university population.

The controversial vote drew national attention--President Clinton called on the regents to change their minds--and struck at the heart of the question of how to fairly allocate limited slots for undergraduates. The problem is particularly acute at Berkeley and UCLA, the most popular of the nine UC campuses, where the law of supply and demand means thousands of qualified students are turned away each year by officials who have the luxury of picking the best.

“I voted that way because I believe in equal rights,” Regent Leo S. Kolligian, a Fresno attorney, said earlier this week about his vote to repeal affirmative action in admissions. “To me, when you give preferential treatment, you’re not exercising equal rights. . . . That’s not the way I understand the Constitution to be.”

Yet four months before his vote, confidential records show, Kolligian leaned heavily on UCLA officials to admit the daughter of a Fresno-area builder who had been rejected with a 3.45 grade-point average, a 790 SAT score and no high school honors classes--by the school’s standard, an anemic academic record.

Internal correspondence sent to Young’s chief of staff indicated that UCLA officials tried to dissuade Kolligian, pointing out that the student’s academic record was “poor.”

“He wanted me to forward this for consideration anyway and asks for the chancellor’s intervention,” a UCLA official wrote in internal correspondence. “He says that the father is a prominent citizen in the Fresno Valley (developer) and that this student should be considered on the basis of coming from an underrepresented area.

“Generally Regent K. is very realistic on these matters,” the correspondence noted, “so this one must be very important to him.”

The student was admitted and is currently enrolled at UCLA, records show. Meanwhile, the school turned thumbs down on more than 500 other students who on their own appealed rejections and had better grades, SAT scores and honor classes than the Fresno applicant, records also show.

Kolligian’s intervention is all the more noteworthy considering that under current admissions policies, students from rural areas already receive special consideration.

A Record of Requests

In all, The Times’ investigation found that Kolligian had made 32 such requests to UCLA since he was appointed to the Board of Regents in 1985 by former Gov. George Deukmejian. As the first regent from Fresno in decades, he said his position has helped him advance the applications of strangers and friends from the Central Valley.

“If preferential treatment is going to be given to those with hardships during their lifetime, I consider this a hardship insofar as somebody living in Central California,” he said, adding that the UC admission rate for Central Valley graduates is below that for the rest of the state.

Khachigian’s case struck closer to home, documents show. Her daughter was rejected for the fall 1989 class although she had a 4.0 grade-point average.

On March 24, 1989, records show, the regent called UCLA to ask why and the request was given to John R. Sandbrook, the chancellor’s assistant at the time.

Five days later, the rejection was reversed and the girl was offered admission with the fall class, records show. She opted instead to attend George Washington University.

Three months later, Khachigian inquired again, this time writing a letter on behalf of a San Clemente applicant who was denied housing because she missed the deadline for submitting her deposit, records show.

The student had appealed but was turned down again. Chancellor Young overruled that decision because he believed “the overall institutional interest” would be better served, Sandbrook wrote in a memo at the time.

Khachigian said Friday she couldn’t recall the housing request but did not deny making it.

Regent William Bagley said he, too, helped with admissions requests. Records show that one of them at UCLA last year was for a student related to a San Francisco banker whom he called his “brethren.”

After Bagley requested a “special look if this is a borderline case,” records show that the student was admitted although her rankings for academic and supplemental factors were low and she had been coded for rejection by the admissions office.

In yet another case, politics, not friendship, prompted Bagley to seek a 1993 graduate school admission. In a letter to Young in September 1993, Bagley cited how Assembly Republican leader Jim Brulte had “held his whole caucus and thus killed” a proposed constitutional amendment that would have overhauled the way regents are selected.

“This one is important, not for me but for Good Government,” Bagley wrote, asking for help with the admission of a sister of a top GOP legislative aide.

“As you would know, the ‘leader’ has to keep ‘his’ members happy. Thus Jim asked for my help.

“I stopped by and thanked Jim for his work--thus he called me re the request for admission. Please do everything you can on this one and please let me and Steve Arditti [the university’s Sacramento liaison] know the positive results.”

The student was not admitted to a graduate program in social work, where she was fourth on the waiting list.

Brulte said he was asked to speak against the legislation by several regents and it was not unusual for him to get his caucus to vote as a bloc. He dismissed as “ridiculous” any attempt to link his admissions request to his actions.

Bagley said that when he buttonholed Brulte after the vote he “was saying thank you. That’s different than trading” a vote.

Other Appeals

Bagley, a former Republican assemblyman, said he writes as many as 10 letters a year. Asked if it was fair for him to give a leg up to some students, Bagley said: “Tell me where in the rule book of life that says you’ve got to be fair. I mean that facetiously.”

Other officials who made requests of UCLA included Gov. Wilson, who made two casual--and unsuccessful--requests on behalf of 1993 applicants. One was for a gubernatorial campaign worker who was denied admission as an undergraduate, and the other for a former staff member who failed to get into graduate school for political science.

Wilson spokesman Sean Walsh said the governor writes many letters of recommendation but only for people he knows personally--either the children of friends or members of his gubernatorial staff.

He said the governor did not screen the requests to determine if the individuals were eligible for UC admission.

“The governor’s general rule is that he provides letters of recommendation for individuals that he may know or for individuals who may have worked with him where he can testify that this individual’s character, their energy, their intellectual ability and their work drive would be a benefit and an asset to the University of California,” said Walsh. “This is not the governor saying, ‘Admit this individual to the university.’ ”

Walsh said that Wilson also has made “several dozen” recommendations over the years to graduate schools, both public and private.

Former Gov. Deukmejian made eight requests to UCLA. Records show that his inquiries through UC lobbyist Arditti in the mid-1980s helped two students get into UCLA who initially had been rejected.

Even after becoming a private citizen, Deukmejian continued to lobby UCLA. According to a memo, he took the case of one 1993 applicant “very personally” and contacted Arditti twice. The student had been rejected, but UCLA reconsidered and gave him an opportunity to start classes as a sophomore.

Deukmejian was traveling and could not be reached for comment Friday, his secretary said.

Records show that among the Democrats who made successful requests were former Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, former state Sen. Gary K. Hart of Santa Barbara, former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, now San Francisco mayor, and former state Sen. Art Torres, now acting California Democratic Party chairman.

Hart, who made one request to UCLA, said he believes he sent a general letter of recommendation for a prospective student who had served as an intern in his office. Hart said he may have written one or two other letters asking UC officials to review a file where a student seemed to have a credible case in which “an injustice was done.”

Brown could not be reached for comment. But McCarthy said he would only help people if their records looked reasonable. If he thought it was a close call, he would send a letter on their behalf, sometimes through Arditti’s office.

Torres said he never got the impression that his recommendation letters were given special treatment.

Maddy, who until recently was the state Senate Republican leader, intervened in 1986 on behalf of the son of a local businessman and friend who helped him in his first political campaign and was an occasional donor. The student was turned down, but UCLA changed its mind after Arditti told the campus that the case was “very important to Maddy.”

“Anybody who’s my age has had their kids and their contemporaries who are college age. I wouldn’t even begin to count the number of requests that I have received from my friends and so on asking that I try to write a letter or do something to encourage the UC,” he said.

Regent Clair Burgener, now chairman of the regents, who voted against affirmative action, wrote letters to UCLA’s admissions director that helped change the course for applicants in 1993 and last year. The former San Diego congressman said he couldn’t recall the older case but remembered that the 1995 letter was written for a relative of a friend. Internal documents show the applicant was apparently headed for rejection but was given the chance to enroll as a sophomore the next year.

“It’s a courtesy and it’s very difficult to say no,” Burgener said. “You know people want to get an education. They [UC campuses] should not admit anybody based on the recommendation of a regent.”

Regent Frank Clark, a Democrat who also voted against affirmative action, contacted a top UCLA official in 1985 after the son of a bank vice president was told to go to another campus.

Paperwork on Clark’s request noted: “Would like him admitted. Very important.” The student was admitted.

Asked about the case, Clark said he had “no recollection.”

The most prolific of the regents, however, has been Kolligian.

Not Always Successful

Not all Kolligian requests were honored, especially for applicants to graduate schools, where the process is carefully controlled by the faculty. Although he pushed hard, Kolligian failed to get his nephew into UCLA’s medical school, records show.

But his track record is much better for undergraduate admissions, which are handled by the campus administration, and records show that Kolligian hasn’t been shy about weighing in for people with whom he has personal and business ties.

One beneficiary has been Kolligian’s longtime friend and business partner in a commercial real estate development on the outskirts of Fresno. Records show that Kolligian contacted UCLA for admissions and housing help for three of his partner’s children.

The latest was in 1990, when Kolligian went to bat for a son of his associate, an applicant with a 3.29 grade-point average and a 940 SAT score--far below UCLA’s academic average for that year. Records show that the youth was admitted for the fall semester. At least 6,000 others with better marks, including some with perfect grades, were turned away.

The son said Kolligian’s intervention “definitely” helped him get into the school, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1994.

“I needed any help I could get, because I knew I was competing on a higher level,” he said. “We know this is the United States. It tends to be more and more who you know, not what you do, these days, for some reason.”

Meanwhile, the case prompted an exchange between UCLA officials about how they could benefit by granting the favor. Young’s assistant at the time, Sandbrook, boasted via electronic mail about the “markers” the chancellor earned by performing the favors for Kolligian’s partner and another Fresno student.

“We admitted [the partner’s son] earlier this year upon specific request from Leo and Leo knows he owes us one,” Sandbrook wrote to another high-ranking official. “Leo then calls and asks if we can get a dorm space for [the youth] since he got a low lottery number. I understand that you are taking care of this, thank you.”

After recounting a third favor--switching the start date for another student from winter to fall--Sandbrook summed up: “CEY [Young’s initials]/you/I have three (3) markers from Leo K in our pocket.”

Sandbrook, now a senior associate dean for the Anderson business school at UCLA, said his note was a manifestation of his “wry” sense of humor and Kolligian adamantly denies that the school asked for something in return.

“If I’m indebted to them, don’t you think they would collect the markers or say, ‘Hey, give me more money for athletics, or give me more money for the playhouse or something?” Kolligian said. “Not once, nobody but nobody ever has.”

Times staff writer Virgina Ellis in Sacramento and Times researchers Janet Lundblad and Michele Buttelman contributed to this story.

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Admissions Favoritism at UCLA

After helping Regent Leo S. Kolligian with two admission requests in 1990, former chancellorial assistant John R. Sandbrook sent this electronic message bragging about the political chits UCLA had accumulated for the favors. Kolligian said the school never asked him to vote for anything in return and Sandbrook, now a UCLA business school official, said the message reflected his “wry” sense of humor.

V.I.P. REQUESTS

Regents, political officials and some of their requests at a glance:

Leo Kolligian, regent and Fresno attorney: Has made 32 requests from UCLA, including one on behalf of a nephew. He successful intervened for the children of his business partner in a commercial office development.

Meredith Khachigian, regent and San Clemente businesswoman: After her daughter had been rejected, she inquired and UCLA reversed that decision.

Frank Clark, regent and Los Angeles attorney: Former Union Bank director whose request helped turn a rejection into a UCLA admission for the son of a bank vice president.

Clair Burgener, regent and former San Diego congressman:Wrote a letter of recommendation for a friend’s daughter who was denied then given a rare contract to enter UCLA as a sophomore.

Bill Bagley, regent and San Francisco attorney: As gratitude, tried to get a graduate student admitted for a lawmaker who voted the university’s way on a bill.

State Sen. Ken Maddy, Fresno Republican: His contact with the UC lobbyist led to Westwood officials changing their mind for the son of a friend and political donor.

Gov. Pete Wilson: Made two casual requests at UCLA--both unsuccessful--but his office confirmed he made requests at other UC campuses.