UC Panel Rejects ‘Multiracial’ Box for Undergrad Application Form

A committee of the University of California’s Board of Regents on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected a proposal by regent Ward Connerly to add an optional “multiracial” check box to UC’s undergraduate student application.

The 12-1 vote by the regents’ educational policy committee means the proposal will not advance to the full board, despite a highly personal, often emotional appeal for its passage from Connerly during the first day of a two-day meeting at UCLA.

The system of allowing students to check one or more racial or ethnic identity boxes on the admissions application is “the ultimate definition of racism” because it does not allow them to describe themselves as multiracial, Connerly said.

Critics have said the proposal would have obscured the racial and ethnic background of students, making it more difficult for the university to collect racial data and track such issues as discrimination.

UC President Robert C. Dynes also opposed the change. While noting recent increases in the state’s population of those who identify themselves as multiracial, Dynes said the university must comply with federal guidelines, which do not now include a multiracial category. He and others said the proposal would have put UC out of step with other institutions.

Since California voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996 -- an initiative led by Connerly, among others -- the university has not been allowed to consider the race of applicants in its admissions decisions. But applicants still can check one or more of 13 race and ethnicity boxes, including “other.”

UC then reports the data based on the five categories mandated by federal guidelines: Asian, Latino, black, American Indian and white.

But Connerly, who is of black, white and American Indian ancestry and whose wife is white, said his own family considers itself a blended whole, not identifying with specific races.

“The term we use for our family is multiracial, but you would deny us the right to use that term,” he said.

Earlier in the day, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson urged UC to compete for the contract to keep managing the troubled Los Alamos National Laboratory but said it should do so with an industrial partner.

Richardson told the regents that UC would serve the nation’s and New Mexico’s interests by continuing its historic role in running the nuclear weapons design facility in his state.

“The easy thing would be to say, ‘We’re not going to bid. Let someone else do it.’ But that wouldn’t be good for the country,” said Richardson, a former energy secretary and New Mexico congressman.

UC has managed the New Mexico lab for the federal government for more than six decades. But after a series of much-publicized management, security and safety lapses at the lab, the U.S. Energy Department announced last year that it would open the Los Alamos contract to competition when it expires in September.

UC officials say the university has not yet decided whether to enter the bidding but is preparing as if it will.

The contract’s timetable and specifics are expected to be released by the Energy Department within the next few months.

Richardson, who noted that he had renewed UC’s Los Alamos contract during his own tenure as energy secretary in the late 1990s, said the university should involve an industrial partner, probably a defense contracting firm, in any such bid.

“UC should do the substance, the science, and let someone else do the safety, the security issues, the handling of hazardous materials,” he said.

Two incidents in July led to the shutdown of virtually all operations at the lab. UC spokesman Chris Harrington said most operations at the lab have restarted, and other operations are expected to resume in the next few weeks.