MINDY ROSS/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Student Regent
Justin Fong, shown here protesting SP-1 and 2 at
Royce Hall on March 14, will step down from his post this week.
By Timothy Kudo
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Student Regent Justin Fong rises from the stacks of paper
cluttering his office on the third floor of the Public Policy
building looking haggard.
It could be because for more than a year, he’s carried the
weight of thousands of students’ worries and hopes on his
shoulders, culminating with the rescinding of SP-1 and 2 in
May.
But actually it’s because he is fasting for Geography
Professor Joshua Muldavin’s tenure.
“I’ve always worked on access to education but the
flipside of that coin is to make sure it’s a quality
education,” Fong said.
In the past year, Fong has served as the only student voting
member of the UC Board of Regents while still studying as a student
at the School of Public Policy.
He’s probably appeared in the Daily Bruin more than any
other figure on campus, which isn’t that difficult
considering he’s on the job close to 100 hours per week.
“I still don’t feel I did enough,” he
said.
Since his time at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate, he has fought
for the repeal of the two regents’ policies that banned the
use of affirmative action in admissions, hiring and contracting in
the university.
He was arrested at a meeting during that time while protesting
the board’s decision to table a motion to repeal the ban.
“Now that I’ve been on both sides of the velvet
rope, I realize that there is a chasm between regents and students,
one that doesn’t necessarily have to exist,” Fong said.
“Students would just as much prefer to sit down for tea with
regents as they like to protest, but unfortunately they don’t
have the opportunity.”
Who would have guessed that years later he would be sitting at
the table about to propose a motion like the one proposed when he
was arrested?
As the movement to rescind the two proposals came to vote this
year, many were worried that the proposal initially given to
“supercede” SP-1 and 2 wouldn’t be enough. The
week before the meeting, Fong announced he was preparing an
alternate motion he would propose at the meeting.
“He wanted the word “˜rescind’ and he was tough
enough, along with some other members of the board and some outside
voices, to bring about a full recision,” said Regent William
Bagley, the board member who began the talk of getting rid of the
proposals.
In that two-month span between the March meeting, where 1,000
people rallied at UCLA urging the board for an immediate repeal,
high school students were choosing whether they would attend the
UC. And in that time, though the number of underrepresented
minorities choosing to attend the UC rose, many will be going
elsewhere.
“I honestly believe that if this was done at the March
meeting, the numbers would have been higher,” Fong said.
“But despite that, they would have been too low.”
Since then, alongside other students he has been protesting for
Muldavin, whom he cites as his reason for going to UCLA. He’s
even been arrested for it.
“I know that my involvement in this case has been called
inappropriate by some; my response to that is that it’s
absolutely appropriate,” Fong said. “I’m here
fighting for the quality of education at UCLA and that’s
exactly what the student regent should be doing.”
In his final days, he continues to work on the admissions policy
that has been challenged by UC President Richard Atkinson and other
regents in the past year and is now more open to change with the
repeal.
Affirmative action is still banned because of Proposition 209,
which state voters passed in 1996, so Fong is seeking other ways to
ensure a more equitable admissions process and hopefully increase
ethnic and racial diversity.
“Every year we turn away thousands of students who are
fully capable of achieving and succeeding here, and we don’t
turn them away because they’re more qualified or less
qualified, we turn them away because we don’t have
room,” Fong said.
“It doesn’t mean that we’re going to reduce
the quality of students, it means we’re going to find better
criteria by which we choose students, and I think that’s a
big myth,” he continued.
According to the Masterplan for Higher Education, the UC system
must admit the top 12.5 percent of graduating high school students.
But Fong noted that the UC decides the criteria by which that group
is determined.
“Students of color who enroll are a product of students of
color who get admitted, who are then a product of students who
apply, who are a product of students who are eligible,” Fong
said. “Within all those ranks, students of color are a small
percentage.
“Students of color probably make up a majority of high
school graduates (in California) but all of a sudden when you talk
about UC eligibility they become a minority, but who determines
eligibility? The UC determines eligibility … and we decided to
define it by SAT and GPA.”
When his term expires, Fong will remain at UCLA for a couple
more quarters. In that time, he says he will continue to be
active.
“I’m one of the biggest fans of the University of
California, but I’m also one of it’s biggest
critics,” he said.