By Lisa Klassen
Daily Bruin Reporter
In a move to bring students closer to their representatives, UC
Regents-designate Jeff Seymour and Tracy Davis held a forum with
members of the Hedrick Hall student government Monday night.
During the meeting, Davis and Seymour addressed issues ranging
from affirmative action to housing to the organization and role of
the UC Board of Regents.
“We are here to educate the students as to who we are and
what we do,” said Seymour, who will take office in the
upcoming academic year. “We want people to know that
we’re accessible, and we want to continue this dialogue with
students.”
Much of the discussion focused on diversity, especially in light
of recent student protests against SP-1 and 2, the regents’
1995 policies that ended the consideration of race and gender in UC
admissions and hiring.
“Diversity should be more than just numbers,” said
Armando Del Portillo, a third-year microbiology student. “My
last name makes me a Latino, but I’m really not
representative of that group. We really need to have more different
people here and require students to take diversity
classes.”
According to Seymour, there is little the university can do to
change statewide affirmative action policies. Proposition 209, the
California initiative that banned affirmative action in the state
in 1996, would remain law regardless of the regents’
actions.
But repealing SP-1 and SP-2 may encourage more minority students
to attend the UC system, Seymour said.
“Repealing those laws sends a message to the people of
California that we are interested in diversity,” he said.
“We have a responsibility to ensure that, when you come to a
UC campus, you have the ability to learn from other backgrounds
“¦ and we feel that the best way to experience this is through
diversity.”
According to some, minority students may choose not to attend a
UC school because they do not feel welcome. In order to reverse
this trend, Davis and Seymour said the UC plans to expand outreach
programs.
In addition to the issue of affirmative action, students at the
meeting brought up UC President Richard Atkinson’s proposal
to get rid of the SAT I as a university admissions requirement.
“We need to deal with what the SAT says about students and
what it means,” Davis said. “It may predict your
freshman GPA, but it really has no effect on your sophomore, junior
and senior GPAs.”
The Academic Senate needs to re-evaluate the SAT requirement to
see if it really meets the goals of the university, she said.
Seymour said he expects a final decision regarding the SAT I to
be reached in the next six months.
One of the reasons policy change may be slowed is the large
numbers of vacancies found in the governments of many state
institutions of higher education, Davis said.
“There are three vacancies in the UC Regent system right
now,” she said. “There’s many more in the Cal
State and community college levels that haven’t been filled
in over six months. They’re important positions and
they’ve just been left empty.”
Davis cites the recent power crisis as a main cause of these
vacancies. With state officials busy negotiating with power
companies, little time has been dedicated to finding replacements,
she said.
According to Seymour, the power crisis is also one of the
reasons that the cost of on-campus housing is increasing. Campuses
with co-generational facilities, like UCLA, have been particularly
hit hard as they rely upon natural gas as an energy supply, Davis
said.
In addition to recruiting students, the regents also want to
foster better relations between faculty and current students.
Some, like Lisa Tang, a third-year English student and the
president of Hedrick Hall, feel that the university should do more
to encourage student and professor interaction.
“In my experiences here, my professors have shown no
interest in me, and likewise, I’ve had no interest in
them,” Tang said. “My best teacher was a TA in my
English composition class because I got the chance to interact with
him.”
According to English professor Frederick Burwick, recent studies
like the Boyer Report show that university faculty often neglect
undergraduate students.
“Better funding would definitely lead to more lower
division mentoring,” Burwick said. “But I believe that
UCLA is trying to bring the faculty and students together with
programs like the Honors Collegium and the General Education
Clusters.”
According to Seymour, the process of finding a mentor may be
unnecessarily difficult. Creating a UC-wide mentoring program,
would require large amounts of time and money, Seymour said.
“In this area, you are required to do self-motivating
work,” he said. “They are on the university campus, but
you just have to find them.”