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Some of the 26 regents of the University of California. First row, left to right: Tracy Davis, Joanne Kozberg, Richard Atkinson, Gray Davis, Sue Johnson, Cruz Bustamante, Irene Miura. Second row: Chand Viswanathan, Michael Cowan, John Davies, Bob Morrison, David Lee, Velma Montoya, Justin Fong. Third row: Odessa Johnson, Peter Preuss, Jeff Seymour, Judith Hopkinson, Mark Kohn, Sherry Lansing.

Reversed!: U.C.’s Ban on Affirmative Action

Regents’ decision may improve diversity in school system, but does not change state law

By Neela Banerjee

With last week’s unanimous decision by the University of California Regents to “rescind” the ban on affirmative action, people across California are talking about ways to bring diversity back to campuses, where race issues had become a taboo subject. For Asian Americans, who dominate the undergraduate populations at some U.C.s, the reversal of SP-1 and SP-2 will hopefully assure a faculty and staff more reflective of the student body.

Hundreds of students, activists and concerned supporters cheered the decision made May 16 at the University of California, San Francisco Laurel Heights campus. The strong language used to reaffirm the commitment to diversity and the unanimous vote came as a joyous shock to most.

“It was a total surprise,” said Leslie Yang, a third-year Berkeley student and advisor to Berkeley’s Asian Pacific Council. “We weren’t even sure if this was going to be on the agenda a week ago.”

In the two weeks before the meeting, last-minute controversy had erupted around the specific language of the resolution, which had said that it was going to “replace” the ban. Pro-affirmative action regents and other legislators saw this compromise language as too weak and fought for the stronger wording.

U.C. Regent Judith Hopkinson, who authored the resolution, held out until the early hours of Wednesday morning before giving in to the change. The resolution was finalized just hours before the public meeting where the vote took place. Student regent Justin Fong, one of those fighting for the stronger language, argued that the resolution needed some streamlining and said, “We wanted to send a really strong message about this, and it just took some time to get it together.”

Most surprising to many was conservative regent Ward Connerly’s vote in support of the new measure. Connerly was the main driving force behind the original 1995 ban on affirmative action in the U.C. system, as well as a strong proponent of the following statewide ban under Proposition 209.

Connerly dismissed last week’s measure as a symbolic gesture, one he said was not worth fighting over, because any new policies enacted by the U.C. system would still have to conform to the statewide law.

“We are spending enough energy on this thing that we could light the city of L.A. for weeks,” Connerly said, explaining his decision.

But student activists such as Hoku Jeffrey, one of the leaders of the pro-affirmative action group By Any Means Necessary, think that the mobilization and action that students have been involved with could not be ignored.

“I think the decision is really a result of the new movement,” Jeffrey said. “I don’t think any of the regents felt like they could vote against this measure.”

The resolution charged the Academic Senate with developing new admissions criteria, set tight deadlines for putting those guidelines in place, and recommitted the university to outreach programs designed to help prepare K-12 students for U.C. admission.

A delegation of nine elected officials, including Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg, and Assembly member Wilma Chan, attended the meeting to show their support for the repeal of SP-1.

The dissolution of SP-1 will enable administrators and admissions officers to do a more holistic review of college applications. One portion of SP-1 said that 50 percent of applicants are reviewed only by numbers, such as GPAs and SAT scores. In this system, admissions officers didn’t read essays or consider anything beyond cold numbers.

According to Professor Michael Cowan, chair of U.C.’s Academic Council, the faculty will take up questions, such as how to weigh academic and motivational factors and whether to retain the SAT 1 or another quantitative measure of college readiness.

The Berkeley Academic Senate committee, anticipating a change in the regent’s policy, had been working since last fall to develop recommendations. The committee on admissions wants to move to a “unitary process,” giving all freshman applicants a single score that combines academic criteria with qualities such as determination, maturity and how the student might use his or her education. This plan will be submitted for statewide approval in the next few months, according to the Berkeley public affairs office.

Meanwhile, there are no major plans to revamp policy in response to the repeal of SP-2, which covers hiring and contracting. Yet, this is the area where Asian Americans seem to face the most discrimination. While Asian American students make up some 40 percent at schools like U.C. Berkeley, Asian American faculty and staff make up less than 10 percent of the total.

“The whole reason I began this quest for affirmative action is because I am Chinese American and I am a beneficiary of affirmative action,” Fong said. “I think there are some mixed understandings and reactions to affirmative action in the Asian American community, which I think are healthy. But if you look at numbers, we are still a community that is discriminated against.”

Berkeley student Yang agreed that even though there was overwhelming support for the reversal of SP-1 from the Asian American student leaders at Berkeley, there are still many who worry that the reversal will shut Asian Americans out of the U.C. campuses.

“There needs to be a lot of education and outreach done around what this means for our community,” Yang said. “I think the point is to realize that as people of color we need to support each other’s concerns.”

Fong agrees that education and outreach are important when dealing with the implications of this issue in the Asian American community.

“Our community needs to be able to discuss race because we lack some understanding of that,” Fong said. He went on to suggest that more studies need to be done on Asian American students in higher education and why exactly their numbers are so high.

Overall, the rescinding of SP-1 did a lot to repair the U.C. system’s reputation, nationally and internally. After six years of controversy, protests and dropping enrollment numbers for people of color, there is finally a proactive step taking place in the system.

“I heard a lot of feedback since the meeting and people are saying that it is really good to see the University of California recovering where it was before,” Fong said.

Fong also said the most important part of this resolution was that it sent a message to the minority students, saying that not only are they welcome, but valued, as well.

“This is so necessary because a lot of those people rightfully have felt attacked over the past five years by people saying that race doesn’t matter or ethnic studies is not legitimate,” Fong said. “Now, the dialogue has opened up and we can make changes and reform affirmative action so it works in this context.”