UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, July 26, 1995
5A
California universities drop affirmative action
The Associated Press
BERKELEY, Calif. — A few years ago, University of California biology professor Richard Steinhardt noticed an affirmative action graduate student who was doing poorly.
The student, a Native American, would do a great job on the first question of his tests, but leave the rest blank.
The problem — and solution — turned out to be simple. The student came from a culture that had no word for time. Coaching and slower paced tests resulted in A's, a Ph.D. and a burgeoning career in research.
"That kind of a person will not be present in the future among our professions if we abandon affirmative action," Steinhardt said Friday.
After a bitterly divided UC Board of Regents voted Thursday night to scrap affirmative action, Steinhardt and others wondered what was next.
The policy, approved Thursday by the UC Board of Regents, eliminates race and gender as a factor in hiring and contracting as of 1996 and in admissions as of 1997.
"It is an unfortunate step backward. I hope it proves not to be a disastrous step backward for higher education," said C. Peter Magrath, president of the National Association of State Universities and Land
Grant Colleges.
Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, who has made repealing affirmative action a key issue of his presidential campaign, said those fears are groundless.
"I think that there are talented people in every race, every ethnic group in California. One of the things that most of us have found wrong with affirmative action is that it is based on a false and demeaning assumption that the bar has to be lowered for members of certain ethnic groups," he said.
It's hard to predict the results of the new policies. Some fear the changes could cut off opportunities for those whose brilliance has been hidden by circumstance.
But the new policy also directs UC officials to draft supplemental criteria that can be considered when admitting students, such as whether they triumphed over such disadvantages as an abusive home or a bad neighborhood.
The admissions policy leaves intact consideration of socioeconomic factors.
On the other hand, enrollment of Asians, who are not considered under-represented at UC, would increase 15 percent to 25 percent. Enrollment of Caucasian students was projected to increase no more than 5 percent.
In May, UC administrators studied the effect of using socioeconomic factors without race and found that African-American enrollment could plunge 40 percent to 50 percent while Hispanic enrollment could decrease 5 percent to 15 percent.
UC admissions administrator Dennis Galligani cautioned that the study could not be used as a direct projection of the new policies because it did not include the yet-to-be-drafted supplemental criteria.
Sanford Lakoff, founding chairman of the political science department at UC-San Diego, believes the Board of Regents' vote would mean an incremental change.
"If it means more blacks and Hispanics go to the community colleges and then transfer in, is that so terrible?" he said.
Those most affected by the change also had mixed reactions.
Cruz Castanon, 42, a Hispanic psychology doctoral candidate at UCLA, said it was unfair because some minorities lack opportunities.
But Patricia Pina, 21, a Hispanic senior at UC-San Diego, supported the new policy.
"I feel people take advantage of affirmative action," she said. "I'm a minority, but I don't think people should get special treatment for it. Not everybody who's a minority has suffered because of it."
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