Letter to the editor: _Findings on admissions policy difficult to prove_

I wanted to comment on the article “Findings by law professor suggest that UCLA Admissions may be violating Prop 209″ published in the Daily Bruin on Oct. 23.

The article highlights Richard Sander’s criticism of UCLA’s holistic review process ““ specifically, the Supplemental Review portion.

Essentially, the law professor finds fault with two aspects of the process: first, that it violates California’s Prop 209; and second, that it gives unfair advantage to black students over Hispanic students. While the latter complaint is a reasonable argument to be made, the former cannot be proven indefinitely.

While Prop 209 prohibits taking race, sex and ethnicity into account in areas of public education, it says nothing about taking social and economic barriers into perspective during the admissions process. And, similar to Associate Vice Chancellor for enrollment management, Youlonda Copeland-Morgan’s, comment in the article, a disproportionate amount of black and Hispanic students face economic and social challenges, which can give them that advantage in the holistic review process.

That advantage, however, is only marginal. In Robert Mare’s report, it is determined that the students admitted via the supplemental review account for only 2.5 percent of all admitted students. Putting aside the fact that the 2.5 percent were not admitted blindly but also underwent holistic review, does such a minute percentage deserve the backlash it has received?

Tiffany Neman

Third-year, sociology

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