Affirmative Action Protesters at UCLA

* Re “Protesters in UCLA Sit-In Call for End to Ban on Affirmative Action,” March 15: If black and Latino students aren’t being denied admission to UCLA and UC Berkeley based on their ethnicity, why should they be admitted based on their ethnicity? Being a Latino student myself, I find it pitiful that demonstrators are demanding race politics play a role in a university’s admissions process. Should UCLA or UC Berkeley ever return to affirmative action, it would be a gross injustice, specifically for all of those students who are admitted or denied because of ethnicity.

ARNULFO GONZALEZ

Montebello

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* On a news show, a young woman at a pro-affirmative action demonstration said that UCLA, being a public institution, was obligated to reflect the diversity of Los Angeles. What nonsense! UCLA is obligated, as a respected public institution, to attract and educate the best and brightest students it can find. Diversity is a social construct, the latest in a long line of buzzwords used by the anti-intellectual majority who persist in the mistaken belief that everybody is the same.

CLIFTON E. BARNETT

Los Angeles

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* I am outraged to read from UC Regents chair S. Sue Johnson (Commentary, March 14) that some students at Berkeley and UCLA recruitment and retention centers reportedly have sent letters to minority high school students to discourage them from even applying to UC, and that student regent Justin Fong has written approvingly of this practice. These students are enjoying the benefits of a subsidized UC education, while encouraging minority students to go to other schools that are more expensive or not as good as UC (possibly both). If they were committed to diversity, they would be encouraging these students to come to the University of California.

Furthermore, I must ask why students are protesting [UC policies] SP-1 and SP-2, since Prop. 209 (passed by California voters in 1996) outlawed consideration of race in UC admissions or hiring. Even if SP-1 and SP-2 are rescinded, UC will still not be able to consider race or ethnicity in admissions and hiring. The issue is Prop. 209. I would urge those now working against SP-1 and SP-2 to draft, and then to mount a signature drive for, a bill that the majority of California voters can get behind.

DOUGLAS E. HILL

Graduate Student, Logic

and Philosophy of Science

UC Irvine