Students and regents of the University of California will say
goodbye today to Ward Connerly as he attends his final meeting of
the UC Board of Regents.
Connerly, who has been a controversial figure in the university,
the state and the nation for over a decade, is remembered first and
foremost as the man responsible for ending the use of affirmative
action ““ first at the UC and then at the state level.
“To get the university to embrace a race-blind process and
to get California to accept, that is a notable
accomplishment,” Connerly said, reflecting on his career as a
regent.
His work against affirmative action in the state has earned him
respect from some and hatred from others, making him perhaps the
most visible and talked-about regent to sit on the board.
In 1993, Connerly, a land-development consultant, was appointed
to the Board of Regents by then-Gov. Pete Wilson, and within only a
few years had begun his campaign to end the use of race as a factor
in admissions and hiring at the UC.
Throughout his tenure, Connerly said his primary goal was to
promote the ideals of equality and race-blindness, which he sees as
being consistent with the American civil rights movement.
“His central thing was fighting against academic
prejudice, and I think his lasting legacy will be that he
spearheaded the movement to remove them from the admissions
process,” said Mark Lincoln, vice president of Students for
Academic Freedom, a national group aimed at promoting fairness and
neutrality on college campuses.
“When you give somebody extra points … you’re
giving them a preference, you’re discriminating against other
people,” Connerly said. “It’s
condescending.”
Many of his actions over the years reflect this goal, from an
initiative to end affirmative action in the admission and hiring
process nearly 10 years ago to a proposal for the addition of a
“multi-ethnic” check-box to the undergraduate
application only a few months ago.
With these and other initiatives, Connerly has reached far
beyond the UC system, affecting laws in California as well as other
states, and some have pointed to a ripple effect that
Connerly’s actions have had on minorities everywhere.
“He’s injured a lot of people … (by limiting)
their access to the job market, therefore maintaining them in the
shadows of life,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “What he
did affected things around the country.”
Many share similar views regarding the effect Connerly has had
on the UC in particular.
“Thanks to Ward Connerly and his initiatives, we’ve
seen numbers for students of color drop even more dramatically than
they were before,” said Alicia Schwartz, assistant organizing
director of the UC Students Association, a UC-wide student lobbying
organization.
“He really limited access to a lot of students, not only
in California but all over,” Schwartz said.
It may be this quality of bringing forward controversial issues
and igniting debate among students and regents that has made him
such a prominent, and some would say valuable, member of the
board.
Some of his initiatives passed and resulted in drastic changes
at the UC while others did not, but overall Connerly brought
politics to the regents in a way that had never been done
before.
“He’s always been someone to take on the bigger
challenges that are often reflective of what (is) going on in the
larger society or California specifically,” said Jennifer
Lilla, president of UCSA.
“He is sort of the lightning rod of these 12 years that
brought the university more into the political arena in a variety
of topics,” she added.
Now that his 12-year term is up, Connerly will leave the UC a
different place than he found it.
From the outset of his tenure as a regent, Connerly made it
clear that the role of race at the university was his primary
concern ““ two years into his term, he had already raised the
issue.
“Since Mr. Connerly was appointed to the Board of Regents,
he actually has led a campaign to end the university’s use of
race in admissions,” said Schwartz.
Connerly has influenced race issues nationwide ““ he has
been influential in two ballot propositions in the state and has
taken his fight to other states as well.
His first step was at the UC.
In 1995, he had spearheaded a campaign that ended the
university’s use of affirmative action in any form. He did so
through two initiatives, SP1 and SP2, which did away with any race-
or sex-based consideration in the UC system, including all
decisions on admissions, hiring and grant awards.
Both SP1 and SP2 were repealed in 2001, but by then it was
largely a symbolic gesture, as by that time, affirmative action was
banned from all public institutions in California.
Connerly was influential on a statewide level as well.
He led the campaign for Proposition 209, passed in the 1996
election, that banned the use of affirmative action in admission
and hiring throughout the state of California.
Connerly said he considers these successes to be the highlight
of his career as a regent and remembers them as a great
accomplishment.
But not all of his experiences as a regent have been positive.
Throughout the years, he has had to face a great deal of opposition
from students ““ which have been some of the toughest times of
his career.
Connerly remembers “sitting on board meetings being called
names like Uncle Tom” as some of the hardest moments as a
regent when all he could do was “sit there and seethe in
anger.”
But while his relationship with UC students has been strained,
his experience with his colleagues has been more positive.
“I think I enjoy their respect, as they do mine,”
Connerly said of his fellow regents.
Though they did not always agree with him, Connerly said he did
not see this as an impediment to his relationship with other
regents.
“It’s not about whether you agree with me or I agree
with you. It’s about a process,” Connerly said.
Connerly’s recent work has been with Proposition 54 in
2003, which would have banned the state from collecting most racial
and ethnic data.
The proposition did not pass.
Neither did his most recent proposal to the regents, which would
have included a “multi-ethnic” check-box to the
admissions application to give students more options in how they
define themselves racially.
Though these two initiatives failed, they were part of
Connerly’s overall efforts and gave students more reasons to
respect or dislike him, as the case may be.
Connerly has had a large effect on the UC and the state of
California, perhaps more than any other regent before him. But
whether this effect has been for good or for ill is subject to
debate.
“His name is always associated with controversy over
diversity and race issues at the university,” Lilla said.
Some support his work as a fight against racism.
“Isn’t the definition of racist being more favorable
to one racial group?” Lincoln asked. “If you were just
to give one race a preference over the other, you’re being
racist.”
But others do not see it this way.
Rather than advancing civil rights, as Connerly believes his
initiatives and propositions have done, Jackson said
“he’s hostile toward the civil rights
movement.”
Jackson further called Connerly’s work a “major
stumbling block for progress.”
There has been continued outcry over the years that
Connerly’s measures, rather than promoting equality, have
shut minority students out of the UC system.
Since the university stopped using affirmative action, the
racial demographic at the UC has changed greatly.
“His ban on affirmative action in the UC system, which
then spread to the ban on affirmative action statewide, means that
… there are now some of the lowest numbers of black and Latino
students in a very long time,” said Yvette Falarca of By Any
Means Necessary, a nationwide organization that defends affirmative
action.
In the class entering UCLA for fall 2004, there were 199 black
students admitted. There are 108 black students in the freshman
class at UC Berkeley this year, Falarca said.
But Connerly says these statistics are not his fault.
“There are all kinds of factors that are involved in the
drop,” Connerly said. “Blame the preceding process,
blame the family ““ don’t blame me.”
And though the numbers are unfortunate, Connerly said,
affirmative action is not the solution.
“The idea that now you have to use preferences to create
this critical mass is absurd,” Connerly said, pointing to the
family as the best way to increase the numbers of minority students
enrolled at the university.
Connerly will remain active in issues of race and ethnicity in
America. He has said his next step will be to take up his activist
efforts in Michigan ““ and it will likely be as difficult a
struggle there as it has been in California.
But he will also step back a bit and take time for himself and
his family.
“I’m going to not retire, but back off a little,
spend time with my family,” Connerly said.
“I want to relax. I want the legacy to be that my
grandchildren know me, not that the people of California remember
what I did.”