Never too far from controversy, the UC Board of Regents is once
again debating the polarizing issue of UC admissions ““ and if
the past is any indicator, things could get ugly.
The latest point of contention is whether the current UC
admissions scheme, comprehensive review, should undergo an outside
audit to ensure that its new admissions criteria are fair,
efficient, and in accordance with California state law.
UC Regent Ward Connerly, a proponent of the audit, argues that
an independent examination of comprehensive review is the only way
to ensure the system’s legitimacy and earn the public’s
trust.
He couldn’t be more correct.
Implemented in 2002, comprehensive review, complete with its
“life challenges” criteria, could very well be the son
of affirmative action. Though it stops short of explicitly equating
skin color with admissions clout, the system’s inherent
subjectivity provides ample room for racial tinkering and other
forms of hanky panky.
Instead of relying on a two-tiered, SAT and grades-based
admissions criteria, comprehensive review has placed substantial
emphasis on immeasurable “life challenges” like
divorce, abuse, poor health and dysfunctional family life. To
reward students’ purported trials and tribulations, UC
admissions boards are handing out “perseverance points”
in heaping spoonfuls, earning the new policy nickname, “sob
story sweepstakes.”
Consequently, applicants saddled with a stable family and good
health are weighed down by their own good fortune. In addition,
students too proud, stoic or optimistic to dwell on past misfortune
suffer a similar disadvantage.
But the current question facing the Board of Regents does not
involve the saneness of this policy (that battle has already been
lost), but rather the impartiality of its application. Coinciding
with recent allegations of foul-play by UC applicants, Connerly and
Regent John Moores have called for an outside audit to ensure the
admissions process does not favor the “life challenges”
of some races over others. Such discrimination would violate the
1996 state referendum that banned affirmative action.
There is reason for concern. According to the Wall Street
Journal, former UCLA admissions director Rae Lee Siporin stated the
new system was invented to “”¦ make the student body as
reflective as possible of the state’s population.” She
goes on to indicate that the use of poverty as the
“disadvantage index” was ditched because it
wouldn’t aid middle-class Latinos and blacks and it would
“pull in” lots of low income Asians.
Legislator Marco Antonio Firebaugh, a key backer of
comprehensive review since its inception, also stated that a
poverty index would (gasp) “”¦ yield a lot of poor white
kids and poor Asian kids.” In order to avoid such an
“offensive” outcome, the new UC admissions policy
certainly appears to target the “life experiences” of
minorities rather than the collective student body.
According to UC statistics, the number of blacks and Latinos
admitted to the University of California under comprehensive review
has jumped to 18.5 percent of the total, a level not matched even
in the heyday of affirmative action. At the same time the number of
admitted Asians and whites has declined.
But in spite of these implications, UC President and diversity
crusader Richard Atkinson has indicated that, in the absence of
direct evidence proving bias, an outside audit would not be
warranted.
In the wake of Proposition 209, this is simply bad policy. While
Atkinson may be correct in assuming the propriety of comprehensive
review, his good faith is doing little to clear the cloud of
suspicion that has hovered over the UC admissions process since
comprehensive review took effect.
Simply put, the new admissions policy appears to be an
underhanded tactic used to circumvent the will of California voters
who passed Proposition 209. And until the UC admissions system
achieves at least a degree of transparency, such perceptions will
continue to undermine the entire process’ credibility ““
regardless of their accuracy.
While the cost of an audit would be small relative to the UC
budget, its effects would be far reaching. In addition to restoring
the confidence of the public in UC admissions, it would improve the
implementation and efficiency of comprehensive review itself.
Given the tumult that has accompanied the admissions process for
the last decade, the UC Board of Regents should go beyond the pale
to ensure a fair and legitimate admissions policy. The board owes
it not just to the UC system, but to the students as well.