Daily Bruin File Photo This student was among the 88
arrested after taking over Royce Hall during protests for
affirmative action in May 1998.
By Noah Grand and Timothy
Kudo
Daily Bruin Senior Staff Diversity has decreased. The UC is
perceived by many as the poster child of the anti-affirmative
action movement and in the next couple months, the UC Board of
Regents will likely start a process to reverse this. President John
F. Kennedy created affirmative action 40 years ago, responding to
the needs of people who had historically been discriminated
against. That decision, for better or worse, withstood the test of
time until 1995, when the Board of Regents, at the behest of Regent
Ward Connerly, passed SP-1 and 2, ending the use of affirmative
action in admissions and hiring throughout the UC system. Part of
SP-1 includes increasing K-12 outreach activities such as tutoring,
mentoring and school partnerships to eliminate educational
disparities early on. The UC has increased outreach spending to
about $300 million. A year later, Connerly worked to get state
voter initiative Proposition 209 on the ballot, which ended the use
of affirmative action throughout the state. Connerly’s group,
the American Civil Rights Coalition, supported a similar initiative
in the state of Washington, which passed ““ and tried
unsuccessfully to do the same in Florida. Connerly and his backers
say that racial preferences should neither harm nor help
individuals. Proponents of affirmative action argue that racism and
sexism exist in society and should be viewed as a factor people
have overcome, much like poverty. “Race is an issue that we
have to treat with the greatest care and caution,” said Kevin
Nguyen, executive director of ACRC and a spokesman for Connerly.
“If there’s any single factor that should fall under
the banner of equal protection it should be race. (Race) should be
irrelevant if you apply equal protection under the law.” This
week, protesters throughout the state will converge at UCLA to urge
the regents to repeal SP-1 and 2, even though Proposition 209 would
continue to ban affirmative action. Their hope at this point is
that by doing so, the university can reclaim an image of being
supportive of diversity. But while activist groups are fighting to
retain this image, groups like the ACRC are working to ensure that
affirmative action is declared illegal once and for all by the U.S.
Supreme Court.
The past is prologue Affirmative action began
in 1961 through an executive order by President Kennedy directing
contractors on federally financed projects to “take
affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and
employees are treated during their employment, without regard to
race, creed, color or national origin.” This was extended to
include gender in 1971. The UC took an early place in the
affirmative action debate shortly thereafter in 1978, with the case
of Allan Bakke, a white student who was denied admission to UC
Davis medical school. The medical school had 100 spots, 16 of which
were set aside for minority students. Bakke argued he was
discriminated against based on his race and took the case to the
U.S. Supreme Court, where affirmative action was found to be
constitutional, but numerical quotas were not. On July 20, 1995,
the University of California became the first system to stop using
affirmative action when the regents passed SP-1 by a 14-10 vote,
with Regent William Bagley abstaining, and SP-2 by a 15-10 vote. At
the time, 17 of the 18 appointed regents on the 26-member board
were appointed by Republican governors. Currently, five members of
the board are Democratic appointees, and two spaces are open.
Hundreds converged on the 1995 meeting at UC San Francisco and,
after the vote, 200 people marched down California Street in
protest. At the time, all nine UC chancellors and then-UC President
Jack Peltason defended affirmative action. “Our affirmative
action and other diversity programs, more than any other single
factor, have helped us prepare California for its future … to
abandon them now would be a grave mistake,” Peltason said at
the time. At a September meeting of the board, the Coalition to
Defend Affirmative Action by Any Means Necessary halted the meeting
three times with their protests. At the time, Lt. Gov. Gray Davis,
who voted against SP-1 and 2, said that the protesters “did a
great disservice. There’s no way that the regents are going
to re-litigate their decision.” In October of 1995, 3,000
people protested for affirmative action in Westwood, the largest of
such protests to date. On Nov. 5, 1996, Proposition 209 passed with
55 percent of the vote. The law superseded SP-1 and 2, making the
current movement to repeal them into a “symbolic”
action. In May of 1998, hundreds of students protested by taking
over Royce Hall just days after Chancellor Albert Carnesale’s
inauguration, after previous Chancellor Charles Young resigned in
what many believed to be a protest of the regents’
decision.
Changing numbers In 1998, the first freshman
class was admitted to the UC without using affirmative action. The
number of American Indian students dropped systemwide from 307 to
292, African Americans from 1,435 to 1,193 and Latinos from 5,494
to 5,084. At UCLA, the number of American Indians admitted fell
from 85 to 50, African Americans from 524 to 313 and Latinos from
1,512 to 995. In the past, affirmative action gave historically
underrepresented students of color ““ African Americans,
Latinos and American Indians ““ consideration based on their
ethnicity. The university still gives preference based on other
factors, such as geographic location. In 1996, Connerly predicted
the fall. “If you give someone a preference, and then you
take that preference away, the numbers are going to go down,”
he told the Los Angeles Times. In 2000, the last year for which
admission statistics are available, the numbers have risen as has
the total admitted population. The number of American Indian
students admitted increased to 255, African Americans increased to
1,328 and Latinos increased to 5,753. UC’s diversity
continues to lag behind that of the state’s K-12 public
school system, much as it did while affirmative action was still in
effect. In 1995-96, 40.5 percent of K-12 students in California
were Latino, 8.8 percent were African American and 0.9 percent were
American Indian. At the UC, the numbers were 15 percent Latino, 3.9
percent African American and 0.8 percent American Indian. These
differences have only been exacerbated as the population of the
state continues to grow and demographic shifts occur favoring
Latinos, who in 1999-2000 made up 42.2 percent of the state’s
K-12 student population. Additionally, while critics have pointed
out that numbers of underrepresented minorities have slowly
increased since the large drop in 1998, proponents of affirmative
action point out that those increases haven’t occurred at the
more selective campuses ““ UCLA and UC Berkeley. The end of
affirmative action hit UCLA and UC Berkeley the hardest. Though
they had the highest percentage of underrepresented minority admits
in 1997, the drop in 1998 was more severe at the two campuses. The
subsequent increases in underrepresented admits also favored the
other UC campuses. The percent of underrepresented minority admits
at UCLA and UC Berkeley has dropped from 22.97 percent in 1997 to
15.78 percent in 2000. In that same time, the percentage of
minority admits at other UCs fell from 17.83 percent to 16.25
percent. Demographics of graduating classes also show the shift in
diversity. Since affirmative action ended, less diverse classes
have been replacing classes that were admitted before SP-1 took
effect. In 1997, the last year affirmative action affected every
class admitted to UCLA, the total campus population included 203
American Indians, 1,407 African Americans, and 3,946 Latinos. In
2000, there were 130 American Indians, 1,068 African Americans and
3,499 Latinos. Also, this year’s graduating class will take
with it many underrepresented minorities who were admitted under
affirmative action policies, further decreasing diversity.
The present and future Though the repeal of
SP-1 and 2 is not on the agenda, thousands are expected to protest
Wednesday’s regents’ meeting at Covel Commons urging
them to vote for a repeal. Regent Bagley, who abstained in the
original SP-1 vote, has been an advocate of repeal, alongside Lt.
Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a regent by virtue of his office, and Student
Regent Justin Fong. While many are protesting as part of a movement
to reinstate affirmative action, Bagley says his only goal is to
remove the stain the policies placed on the UC’s reputation.
“Our effort on the Board of Regents is not to bring back
affirmative action. If that was the case, I wouldn’t have the
votes,” he said. “Our effort is only to repair the
image of the university in the eyes of the minority community and
the eyes of academia.” Many believe that the symbolic repeal
will send a message to minority communities that may lead to more
underrepresented students choosing to come to the university. But
as protesters move toward the symbolic vote, elsewhere the ACRC is
working to make affirmative action illegal. Alongside the
group’s efforts in Washington and Florida are new proposals
in Colorado and Michigan. On a short-term basis, the group’s
goal is to find states where legislation or state voter initiatives
could be passed banning affirmative action. “If the
circumstances are right, if there’s the same kind of
grassroots support … we will help out as much as we can,”
said ACRC director Nguyen. In the long run, however, the group is
working to push a lawsuit over affirmative action to the U.S.
Supreme Court where they hope affirmative action will be ruled
unconstitutional. Nguyen said there have been lawsuits that could
have gone to the court but were instead settled. “The Supreme
Court is going to be a vehicle to hopefully resolve this matter
definitively,” he said.
History of Affirmative Action SOURCE: NAACP
Communications Office, Daily Bruin Archives Original graphic by
JACOB LIAO/Daily Bruin Web adaptation by MIKE OUYANG/Daily
Bruin