Latino Faculty Urge UC to Remedy ‘Inequity’

Prominent Latino faculty members at the University of California on Monday urged the UC regents to address what the group described as a “crisis of Latino inequity” at all levels of the university.

In a letter sent to Board of Regents Chairwoman Sue Johnson, about 20 faculty members--including the dean of UC Berkeley’s school of education--expressed concern over what they called a “striking underrepresentation” of Latinos among students, faculty, staff and administrators at the nine-campus university.

The faculty members, who said they represent more than 100 of their colleagues, also called on the regents to repeal UC’s 1995 ban on affirmative action. Such a move, they said, would signal the university’s “good-faith effort” to fulfill its mission to serve all residents of California.

The letter, which included a four-page plan on ways to increase Latino representation at the university, came amid a flurry of activity this week by all sides in the affirmative action debate.

Six years after UC became the first university system in the nation to ban race-based preferences in admissions and hiring, the regents are set to revisit the politically charged issue at a meeting Wednesday.

Any action will be mainly symbolic, since the passage of statewide Proposition 209 in 1996 banned affirmative action in all state hiring, contracting and education. But, with a widespread perception that their 1995 vote made the university appear hostile to minorities, the regents have been under pressure from students, legislators and many others to reconsider the ban.

The Latino faculty in the letter also urged the university to eliminate use of the SAT as an admissions requirement, adopt clear “holistic” admissions guidelines and more aggressively recruit Latinos for faculty and administrative positions.

Signatories, including Eugene Garcia, dean of the UC Berkeley school of education, could not be reached for comment Monday.

But several UC regents and administrators, including Johnson, said they sympathized with the concerns expressed and said the university was striving to increase minority representation at all levels.

They also said that many of the actions suggested, including the elimination of the SAT and increased outreach to community colleges, already are either under consideration or in process. UC President Richard C. Atkinson has proposed eliminating the SAT as an admission criterion by 2003.

“I understand what they’re saying and believe me, all of this is a concern for us,” Johnson said. “If we’re going to have a university in the next millennium that is supported by the taxpayers of California, large numbers of whom are Latino and Chicano, we need to improve these numbers. But we can’t do it overnight.”

Regent Ward Connerly, an outspoken affirmative action foe, said the underlying theme of the letter appeared to be a desire to return to race-based preferences for admissions and hiring.

“What they really want here is something we cannot give, nor should we, and that’s a system giving preferences to underrepresented minorities,” Connerly said. “The people of California have said decisively that that is not what they want.”

Since the ban took effect in 1998, there has been a sharp drop in admissions of underrepresented minorities. The numbers have crept back up since then, but enrollment of black and Latino students remains low at the system’s most prestigious campuses, including UC Berkeley and UCLA.

Moreover, Latinos make up only about 4% of the university’s faculty, a UC spokesman said Monday, compared to about a third of the state’s population. Figures for administrators were not available.

At its meeting Wednesday, the university’s governing board will take up competing resolutions on the affirmative action issue: a mildly phrased version, supported by regents on both sides of the debate, that seeks a compromise on the 1995 ban, and another, proposed by student Regent Justin Fong, that calls for a complete repeal.

If passed, the compromise would replace the two 1995 resolutions banning the use of race or ethnicity in admissions decisions with a new resolution that affirms the university’s commitment to a student body “that encompasses the broad diversity characteristic of California.”

It also states that the university remains governed by the provisions of Proposition 209.

The compromise, proposed by Regent Judith L. Hopkinson to reach common ground, has the support of both Connerly and Regent William T. Bagley, who has long sought to overturn the ban.

But Fong on Monday derided the compromise as a “half-step” attempt to restore the university’s credibility with minorities.

“We need to take the whole step and just rescind” the ban, Fong said. “This has cast a shadow over the university, and we need to get rid of it.”

Students, who have been among the most active opponents of the ban, plan to demonstrate outside the meeting in San Francisco on Wednesday at which regents will debate the two resolutions.