UCLA Students Arrested in Admissions Policy Protest

A dozen UCLA law students were arrested Thursday after they took over the school’s records office to press demands for a return to affirmative action admissions policies.

The students locked themselves in the office on the Westwood campus when negotiations broke down with law school Dean Jonathon Varat after a noon protest rally.

Several hundred other law school students who support increased minority enrollment lined the hallway and chanted, “UC Regents--We See Racists!” as university police led the handcuffed protesters away.

Varat authorized the police to move in after three hours of talks failed to persuade the students to end the sit-in. He expressed dismay at the arrests.

“I don’t think we should be having to do this,” he said. “But there seems to be some insistence on their part at being arrested.”

During the rally, which involved Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), students protested what they contend is foot-dragging by Varat and other officials in recruiting minority law students in the wake of Proposition 209--the 1996 ballot measure that bars racial and gender considerations in state hiring, contracting and public university admissions.

Students said they were angry and alarmed that there were only two blacks among the 286 new faces in last fall’s incoming law class. That class included 17 Latino students, 66 Asian Americans, 126 whites and one Native American. The university was unable to ascertain the ethnicity of the remaining 74 students. By contrast, the 1996 class that enrolled before Proposition 209 had 19 black students, 45 Latinos, 48 Asian Americans and five Native Americans.

Varat denied the protesters’ accusations and asserted that several of their demands have been addressed by UCLA law school officials.

Protesters said they want admissions officials to use a more “holistic” approach to recruiting minorities to counter the ban on affirmative action.

Among those watching Thursday’s arrests were several out-of-town law students visiting for a legal conference. One of them, black University of Tennessee law student Angela O’Neal, gave a blow-by-blow account by cell phone to friends back in Knoxville.

“This is the wildest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “This is a whole different world out here.”

The 12 law students and two other protesters were led away to waiting police vans. The students were booked at the Twin Towers jail in downtown Los Angeles on misdemeanor counts of trespassing.