Prop. 209 Impact on Campuses, Women

Chancellors Charles Young and Chang-Lin Tien (Commentary, Oct. 20) say that Prop. 209 would turn their campuses into bastions of Asian Americans and whites, cutting the attendance of blacks and Latinos--already a relatively small number--by at least half. Both chancellors said such a decrease would diminish the education of all students.

Excuse me? It would not diminish the education of those Asian American and white students who got in the old-fashioned way--scoring higher--that would have been denied admission because of a quota.

BILL SIMPSON

Rancho Palos Verdes

* Next week my calculus students at UCLA will take their first exam. In addition to the usual questions, I plan to ask them their ethnicity. Then, after grading the exam, if I find that certain minorities (to be chosen by me) have averaged lower than the rest of the class, I plan to award them extra points. This is intended to compensate for deficiencies in their pre-college math preparation, and also to promote diversity, particularly among math, science and engineering majors.

Absurd? Illegal? But my plan is modeled on the admissions policy practiced by UC Berkeley and UCLA in recent years!

I hope that the UC can be representative of California and the nation, and I may yet decide to vote against Prop. 209 (or at least abstain). But first I need to hear a compelling reason to do so, based upon unassailable fact and clear logic, not some high-minded appeal to nebulous concepts like diversity and equal opportunity/affirmative action. So far I haven’t heard anything to cause me to vote in favor of combating one injustice with an equivalent injustice, one which I consider equally indefensible.

ROBERT D. EDWARDS

Pacific Palisades

* Re “Chancellors Say Prop. 209 Would Hurt Education,” Oct. 21:

There is another name for ethnic cleansing. It’s called voting yes on Prop. 209.

HELEN GALVIN

Altadena

* James Q. Wilson (Opinion, Oct. 20) misrepresents the significance of Prop. 209 for the law of sexual equality in California. If passed, this constitutional amendment will greatly decrease what has been the California rule for the past 25 years: that the state may not discriminate against women or men on the basis of their sex unless it has a “compelling” need to do so.

Prop. 209 would set this standard far lower and permit such discrimination whenever “reasonably necessary to the normal operation” of a state program. This is a standard so low that the U.S. Supreme Court would be unlikely to uphold it.

In the law up to the 1970s, “reasonably necessary” gender classifications governed the “normal” operation of such schemes as female-only flight attendants and male-only police forces. It is unlikely that Californians, long on the cutting edge with respect to sexual equality, would knowingly endorse such a significant step backward for fairness.

GAYLE BINION

Professor of Political Science

and Law & Society

UC Santa Barbara