By Marcelle Richards
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
RE-28 may comply with Proposition 209, but it could still
provide a back door for UC’s Academic Senates to tackle
problems with diversity in admissions.
The SAT I, Advanced Placement scores and minimum GPAs in
admissions could theoretically be no more.
When SP-1 passed in 1995, the use of race, gender and ethnicity
in admissions was deleted from UC policy. Section 4 of SP-1 allows
personal hardships to be considered in the admissions process
provided the applicant is academically eligible, largely weighted
by GPAs and SAT scores.
After the adoption of SP-1 and 2, African American and Native
American enrollments dropped by more than 50 percent between 1995
and 2000. RE-28 counters SP-1 by giving Academic Senates the
opportunity to recommend revisions to UC admissions policies.
“I’m sure when the senate gets a hold of it,
it’ll be turned inside out, upside down and carefully looked
at,” said John Edmond, vice chair of the Academic Senate.
“The fact that admissions is back in the senate where it
belongs is a big move.”
Many view RE-28 as merely symbolic since Proposition 209, a
California initiative which bars affirmative action, is still in
place. But the power reinstated to faculty may prove to be more
than symbolic, said Board of Regents spokesman Trey Davis.
“No student now applying to UC would be subject to the
provisions of SP-1,” he said.
Academic Senates will submit recommendations by this summer in
order to complete a full review of undergraduate admissions
policies by December 2001.
Davis said while race will not resume its place in admissions
criteria, RE-28 gives faculty the prerogative to challenge
UC’s traditional number-crunching criteria.
Michael Brown, chair of UC Santa Barbara’s council on
admissions and evaluations, supported SP-1 and 2. But he said the
use of AP scores and the SAT I inhibit UC campuses from fostering
populations reflective of California.
“Every student who goes to high school gets a GPA, but not
every student goes to a school with the same number of AP
classes,” he said. “Some of them don’t even get
access to those courses.”
UC President Richard Atkinson’s proposal earlier this year
to omit the SAT I from admissions is another option many hope will
be advanced by RE-28.
“One thing implicit in Atkinson’s proposal was to do
our comprehensive reads for all our admits,” said Patricia
Greenfield, psychology professor and member of the council on
undergraduate admissions and relations with students. “Doing
the comprehensive read would mean you’d use many criteria
““ did grades go up or down, did courses get
harder?”
Chancellor Albert Carnesale said at the board meeting that the
use of comprehensive reading is already being used at UCLA, and
that socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds are taken into
context.
What the term “academic achievement” means was often
difficult to define while SP-1 was still in effect. Perceived
academic achievement under SP-1 was largely reliant on an
applicant’s GPA and SAT I scores. RE-28 struck out the
UC’s guidelines to admit 50 to 75 percent of applicants on
this criteria, leaving faculty free to define their own terms.
Carnesale said UCLA admits 55 percent of students under academic
achievement, but other factors ““ such as socioeconomic
hardships ““ are also taken into consideration. He said the
changes in diversity would be more prevalent at other campuses.
“People have more to offer than what’s
quantified,” Brown said. “We need more work in defining
academic achievement and move to operationalize it to allow us and
the state to take advantage of the talents of its
citizenry.”
News of RE-28 has reignited Brown’s hope to see the UC
evaluate students in the context of their environment.
“We need to take into consideration the whole range of
talents of those applying,” he said. “We need to apply
it so it’s equitable for everyone.”
At UCLA, Greenfield will be pushing to implement a “life
challenges” scale, which ranks a candidate’s hardships
from one to four, four being the most severe. Life challenges may
include parents’ education and income levels as well as other
personal problems revealed in the applicant’s essay.
Greenfield gathered statistics on students, each ranked by their
degree of hardship. She found that the number of underrepresented
students increased with each level. A four would merit special
consideration.
By using more holistic criteria, Greenfield said Proposition 209
may not be as stifling to the promotion of diversity.
“We’ll step up to the plate,” Edmond said.
“(Admissions) was originally the mandate of the senate
anyway.”