Boalt Hall Accepts More Blacks, Latinos

UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law announced Tuesday that it has accepted 32 black students, more than twice as many as last year--when none of the students who had been accepted actually enrolled.

The number of Latino students also rebounded this year, with 60 Latinos accepted compared with 46 in 1997.

“It’s marvelous,” said Herma Hill Kay, dean of the law school. “We went to extraordinary lengths to overcome this negative image that Berkeley doesn’t want African Americans.”

To drum up applications, Boalt’s admission director visited more historically black colleges than in the past. The black and Latino alumni joined in hosting receptions in Atlanta and other cities for prospective students, while current students visited California State University campuses in an outreach effort financed by the law school alumni.

Although encouraged by the numbers, Kay cautioned that the school won’t know until August how many of the 32 students agree to sign up for fall classes.

Altogether, Boalt selected 857 students out of an applicant pool of 4,587. Law school officials expect that fewer than a third of those accepted will enroll. The school plans for a first-year class of 270 students.

Last year, none of 15 African Americans accepted to Boalt decided to enroll, prompting Kay to call the numbers “a total wipeout.” One student who had deferred admission from the previous year became the lone African American in the first-year class of 270 students.

Kay said she hoped for a better showing this year. But she said that Berkeley often loses minority students to elite private law schools, such as Stanford and those in the Ivy League, which can afford to offer more enticing scholarships to promising students.

Boalt, as a public school, is prohibited from targeting scholarships by race, Kay noted, while private colleges are free to use affirmative action in all their decisions.

This is the second year in the post-affirmative-action era that Boalt and other UC graduate and professional schools have picked their first-year classes without any preferences for race or gender.

The new rules ending affirmative action in admissions were phased in this year for undergraduates, resulting in sharp drops in the number of blacks, Latinos and Native Americans accepted at the most competitive UC campuses.

Boalt accepted slightly fewer Asian Americans this year, 144, compared with 149 last year. The number of white students also declined--to 461, from 499 last year. The school accepted four Native Americans, compared with two last year. Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans are considered “underrepresented minorities,” who once benefited from the school’s affirmative action program.

The San Francisco Bar Assn. also joined the recruitment drive last week, saying that it would offer $5,000 scholarships--enough to cover about half of Boalt’s tuition--to half a dozen minority students. Because the bar association is a private organization, it is not covered by the state’s ban on affirmative action.