The sprawling 162,00-student U.C. system was one of the first public universities to embrace affirmative action in the 1960s; its Davis medical school sparked the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic Bakke decision in 1978. Next month, the board is set to vote on an incendiary proposal by regent Ward Connerly (himself an African-American) to end race and gender preferences in admissions and hiring. Connerly, a Sacramento businessman and Gov. Pete Wilson ally, argues that affirmative action stigmatizes minorities it’s intended to help: “We cannot allow the desire for diversity to overshadow the need for the best-qualified students.”
But who is “best qualified”? There are no simple criteria. Last year Berkeley, the most prestigious of the state’s nine campuses, got more than 9,000 applications from straight-A students and had space for only 3,500 freshmen. So other factors–including geography and income–are also considered. U.C. officials acknowledge that it’s easier for qualified minority applicants to get these coveted spots than it is for qualified whites (the mean grade-point average for entering freshmen last year was 3.4 for blacks; 3.7 for Hispanics; 3.8 for whites; and 3.9 for Asians). A small percentage of lower-scoring students are also admitted based on special athletic or musical talent. Connerly doesn’t object to those preferences, but he does oppose cases in which less-qualified minorities are allowed in just because of their race. Yet no one can say exactly how many students are admitted because of racial affirmative action alone.
Clearly, passions are running ahead of percentages in the U.C. debate. More rallies are planned before next month’s meeting– and student regent Ed Gomez says he’ll try to postpone the vote. If California voters approve the 1996 initiative banning preferential treatment by race, sex or ethnicity, U.C. will have to scale back its affirmative-action policies anyway. Campus liberals are prepping for the fight. “Change anything,” one protester audaciously warned the regents last week, “and you’ll have a new civil-rights movement on your hands.”
