Park City Will Keep Sundance

Six years after banning affirmative action and plunging into a wrenching national debate over race-based preferences, University of California regents voted unanimously Wednesday to drop their controversial policy.

The turnaround was mainly symbolic. Voters approved a statewide ballot measure, Proposition 209, the year after the university imposed its ban, and the initiative continues to prohibit affirmative action in all state agencies.

But regents and university officials said the shift in policy could have some actual impact in two areas.

First, officials hope Wednesday’s vote will remove perceptions that an “unwelcome” mat has greeted minorities at the university’s entrance since 1995.

Second, the vote might open the way to a shift in some admissions policies. Since 1995, UC admissions worked with a two-tiered system. Between 50% and 75% of all those admitted to each campus are judged solely on the basis of academic criteria such as grades and test scores. For the remaining students, other factors--everything from athletic ability to overcoming adversity--may be factored in.

Critics of the university’s policies have insisted that a larger share of admissions be made under that more liberal set of criteria. The university’s academic senate is now reviewing admissions policies, and by returning control over admissions policies to the faculty, Wednesday’s vote could hasten a change in admission guidelines.

Moreover, even the symbolism of the move loomed large; the regents’ ban had helped spark a nationwide movement during the 1990s to roll back such race-based programs.

The 1995 ban was followed by a quick drop in the number of black and Latino high school students applying to the nine-campus university as well as on the percentage admitted.

In 1998, the percentage of black applicants admitted fell to 64% compared with 73% before the ban; the percentage of Latino applicants admitted slipped from 80% to 75%.

The number of black and Latino students has moved back up in recent years. But most of the increases have been at the university’s less-selective campuses. Enrollment of black and Latino students at the university’s most competitive campuses, UCLA and Berkeley, remain below 1995 levels.

University officials have said the ban has hurt recruiting efforts, making top black and Latino students more likely to pass up UC in favor of competing schools, such as the Ivy League universities. Removing the ban, they hope, will attract more of those students to UC.

“The welcome mat is back. Hallelujah!” said Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks), an ex officio regent, after the 22-0 vote.

Ward Connerly, the board’s most forceful opponent of affirmative action, surprised many by going along with the repeal. “We have to move on. We’re spending enough energy on this thing that we could light the city of Los Angeles for weeks,” he said.

As UC President Richard Atkinson cast the final vote on the measure, making it unanimous, students, who had packed the regents room at UC San Francisco and lined a walkway outside, erupted in cheers and whoops of victory. Many regents, looking visibly relieved, exchanged hugs, kisses and backslaps.

“This is a huge victory,” student Regent Justin Fong said as cheers from the students gathered outside echoed within the hall. “A victory for the University of California and the state of California.”

Gov. Gray Davis, an ex officio regent who did not attend the meeting, praised the action. “I believe the university should reach out to all deserving students regardless of their race or ethnicity,” he said.

Wednesday’s vote, uncertain until the final moment, came after Atkinson, regents Judith L. Hopkinson and William T. Bagley, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Hertzberg stitched together an eleventh-hour proposal to both sides on the board and to legislators.

The new language largely came down to a single word. An earlier proposal had called upon the regents to “supersede” the 1995 resolutions that had banned racial preferences in admissions and hiring.

But supporters of affirmative action balked at that wording--in part because they were suspicious of Connerly’s support for it.

The final resolution quelled those concerns by having the regents vote to “rescind” the earlier resolutions.

What clinched the deal, Hertzberg said after the vote, was Atkinson’s willingness to give legislators a written commitment on a time limit--in time for the class of 2002--by which the academic senate must finish its review of admission policies.

The rapid series of events that led to the vote began late Tuesday afternoon. Connerly said he got a call from Hopkinson as he was driving. She told him opposition was growing to the “supersede” language and asked him what he wanted to do.

As negotiations continued, it was a “matter of, how do you get all these people on all these different places to concentrate on one piece of paper and one word,” Fong said.

Bagley, a defender of affirmative action and a longtime Connerly rival, got a fax of the revised resolution at 7 p.m. Tuesday and met with civil rights advocates in a hotel room to get their input. At 10 p.m., he talked to Bustamante. But it was 1 a.m. before several of the key legislators got copies.

Connerly had decided Tuesday night to support the new language, but many of those present had no idea when the meeting began what he had decided.

Outside, where the student protest had grown from about 50 to 120 demonstrators during the morning, only a few students were even leaning close enough to a loudspeaker to hear when Connerly began to speak. The rest paid little attention. They chatted, and a few people chanted in the back, until those near the speaker finally called for silence.

Connerly said he would support the compromise. His rivals knew they had a unanimous vote.

“Great. Fabulous,” Hertzberg said as he stood at the back of a news conference eating a sandwich while regents spoke to reporters. Then Hertzberg, who is known for his bear hugs, leaned close to embrace a passing acquaintance. “We did the job,” he crowed.

At the same time, Connerly stood slightly apart from his fellow regents, leaning against a wall with his hands deep in his pockets.

“It all came down to whether I wanted to allow the proponents of racial preferences their moment of glory” by creating a division on the board, he said later. “I decided it would be awfully childish of me . . . to prolong the agony.

“I would like to think I am a big enough man not to damage the university because of one word.”

As Hertzberg left, he came upon Connerly in the hall. The two looked at each other and hesitated for a brief second. “You never hug me, do you, Mr. Speaker!” Connerly exclaimed. The two then embraced.