Last year, as readers of Community Advocates’ “>p/eds will know, the California legislature proposed (then ultimately killed) a constitutional amendment to allow racial and ethnic preferences to be re-imposed in admissions to the University of California, the State Universities and Colleges and the community colleges. Had it been placed on the ballot and supported by the voters, Senate Constitutional Amendment 5 would have revoked portions of Proposition 209 which bans racial and ethnic preferences in university admissions in our public universities.
When then Speaker John Perez withdrew the proposal, the Latino Legislative Caucus and the Legislative Black Caucus issued a joint statement that decried the death of SCA 5. They alleged that its failure would result in “denying equal opportunity for all Californians.”
Similarly, when the Regents of the University filed a brief before the United States Supreme Court a few months later arguing in support of racial and ethnic preferences in a Michigan affirmative action case, (as we pointed out in an “>New York Times prominently featured an article that has offered the most compelling evidence yet that the University of California is doing more to promote educational opportunity than just about any other university in the nation. As the Times’ headline blared, “California’s Universities, Still a Source of Opportunity.”
The Times’ economic maven, David Leonhardt, opens the glowing report on what California has done,
The University of California is struggling with budget woes that have deeply affected campus life. Yet the system’s nine colleges still lead the nation in providing top-flight college education to the masses. [Emphasis added]
We and others have “>College Access Index” that seeks to plum how well a university does after it has admitted poor kids by determining the university’s graduation rate of those students, the cost to the students after receiving their Pell Grants, the ratio of school endowment to students, etc.
Using these measures to determine accessibility and chances for success for disadvantaged students, the Times concludes that of the top 10 schools in the country that “are doing the most for low-income students” six are UCs (Irvine, Davis, Santa Barbara, San Diego, UCLA, and Berkeley—in that order #1 to #7.
The impact of this study will be interesting to observe. Will the Latino and Black caucuses in the legislature be satisfied that their economically disadvantaged constituents are being given better chances to succeed educationally than in any other state in the union or will they insist that those opportunities be apportioned as race and ethnic spoils?
This is a moment of truth where our commitment to non-discrimination and fairness will be put to a test. Do we support a system that is doing better than anywhere else to help the disadvantaged—no matter their race or ethnicity—-or will there be a push to revert to ethnic preferences that, by their very nature, prefer some disadvantaged over others? One can only hope there are lots of subscribers to The New York Times in Sacramento and at UC headquarters.
