San Francisco, California -- The University of California Board of Regents voted last week to end racial preferences in hiring and contracting by January 1996 and in admissions by the following January.
The vote represents the most dramatic scaling back of affirmative action in American higher education since the concept gained favor in the 1970s. University officials predicted before the vote that adoption of such a policy would lead to significant drops in black and Hispanic enrollment, and increases in Asian-American enrollment. White enrollment is expected to remain flat.
The regents voted after a long, often fractious day in which they heard more than six hours of testimony, evacuated the building because of a bomb threat, sniped at each other about parliamentary procedure, and were prayed for by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
The regents voted to end preference in hiring by 15 to 10, and in admissions by 14 to 10 with one abstention. The final vote was delayed by about an hour because the board called a recess after members of the audience started jeering and walking toward the regents to prevent Gov. Pete Wilson from speaking. The crowd that remained in the room sang and clapped in the board’s absence.
“I’ve been on public-education boards 28 years and this has been one of the most difficult days,” said Regent Roy T. Brophy, who had pushed a compromise plan that would have allowed time for additional study before the end to affirmative action in admissions would take place.
During the day, black and Asian-American speakers spoke for and against racial preferences, telling often-anguishing personal stories about their experiences with discrimination or describing their sense that the world attributed their success to affirmative action.
The closeness of the vote reflected the deep divisions within the board and the bitter differences in public opinion on the issue of affirmative action. The meeting was interrupted several times by cheers, applause, hissing, or angry catcalls from an audience of about 250 that crowded into the small, windowless meeting room.
While voting to end racial preferences in admissions, the board voted to increase outreach efforts to attract low-income students and others who may be disadvantaged. Such students may also, under the policy, receive special consideration in admissions, provided that race and ethnicity are not the sole criteria for such efforts.
Although the vote and discussions concerned issues of great importance to students and faculty members, the meeting was widely considered a political proving ground for Governor Wilson, who has made affirmative action a key issue in his campaign for the Republican nomination for President.
Governor Wilson’s presence put pressure on the regents, who are prominent political donors. Although Mr. Wilson appointed only five members of the current board, most of the rest were also appointed by Republicans. A spokesman for the university said that governors rarely appear at regent meetings, and that Governor Wilson last attended in January 1992 to vote on a large tuition increase.
Mr. Wilson issued an executive order in June to curb affirmative-action programs that give preferential treatment to women and members of minority groups in state hiring and contracts. He also has urged Californians to support a ballot initiative expected in November 1996 to end racial and gender preferences by all units of state government, including public colleges.
In the days leading up to the meeting, Mr. Jackson threatened to lead civil disobedience if the board went ahead with the plan to end affirmative action, and the Governor said Mr. Jackson would be arrested if he broke the law.
Mr. Jackson was not arrested, but made a 45-minute presentation that included a prayer asking God to “lift us from the racial battleground to common ground to higher ground.”
Many California leaders said the vote was one of the most important in the state’s history. Willie Brown, former Speaker of the California Assembly and a self-proclaimed recipient of affirmative action in higher education, asked the board not to “consign the university to the same base place where we of the world of politics reside” by voting to end racial preferences before the voters have spoken.
For the university, many educators said the vote could cause terrible damage. The university is currently conducting a presidential search that has already hit some highly publicized snags. Regent Brophy said in an interview that one reason he pushed against the plan that was adopted was that “in the middle of a sleepless night” before the meeting, he thought, “If we pass this today I see no way, when campuses break out in confrontation, that we will be able to attract a president into a system that is really in trouble. I believe it is a very unattractive proposition for an outside president.”
Ward Connerly, the regent who proposed the plan, asserted his support for diversity, but added: “It is impossible for me to conclude that a preference to some based on race is not a disadvantage, is not discrimination against others. The only question is the magnitude of the disadvantage. As for the University of California, I believe it is considerable. Finally, the longer we wait before changing direction on this issue, the more difficult it will become to ever change.”
Last week’s meeting sparked a nearly 24-hour protest, starting at 11 p.m. the night before the regents were to vote. About 40 students brought sleeping bags to the building and camped out.
By 6 the next morning, several hundred students were gathered to try to gain seats for the meeting. Others, organized by the University of California Student Association, started to picket. The protesters, from a variety of racial and ethnic groups, chanted “Education is our right. Affirmative action is our fight.”
Watching over the students were state and city police, some on the roof of the building, some with batons. The protests outside were peaceful. At one point, members of a radical women’s group broke away and said they were about to try to break into the board meeting. Leaders of the main protest dissuaded them.
Throughout the day, students divided their time between watching the meeting on television, attending teach-ins about affirmative action, marching, chanting, and listening to speeches.
The only arrests came when the Rev. Cecil Williams, a San Francisco civil-rights leader, and four others sat down in front of a garage at the university’s Laurel Heights campus. Police handcuffed and arrested the five, and released them as a crowd of several hundred shouted “Ho ho, hey, hey, affirmative action has to stay.”
Students came here from throughout the state. Linda Lum, an Asian-American student from the university’s Santa Cruz campus, said, “Abolishing affirmative action means the same thing as censorship. If they take away our faculty and their right to publish in the universities, we’re going to be learning one thing, and that’s white history, and that’s wrong.”
Jeffrey Montez de Oca, an American Indian who graduated from Berkeley this year, said he was here because “I don’t think I would have gotten into college without affirmative action.”
While all the students outside the meeting supported affirmative action, there was also visible political activity against racial preferences. An unknown person flew a small private plane over the campus for two hours carrying a banner reading: “End race and gender based preference now!”
The highly publicized meeting came at a bad time for the university. The Legislature is deciding how much state money the university should receive for 1995-96.
The regents heard from two groups of speakers before they voted. The first comprised 31 prominent citizens, including California legislators, educators, and Mr. Jackson. The second group of 39 ministers, alumni, students, and others was chosen from a list of 140 people who asked to speak.
Many spoke about the importance of the university to the state.
Coleen Sabatini, a junior majoring in biology at the university’s San Diego campus said that in 24 courses she had had only one female professor and none who were black or Latino.
All the major groups of faculty members and administrators said they didn’t want the university to take a leading role in the national affirmative-action debate.
“I am frightened for the future of the University of California because of this,” said Daniel L. Simmons, chairman of the systemwide Academic Council, in an interview before the meeting. “The university has been thrust into the arena of Presidential politics in a way that will politicize the university and in a way in which it can only lose. It turns people on both sides of this issue against the university and sets the university up as the focal point.”
“The decision has nothing to do with what is good and appropriate for the university and has all to do with which side you’re on.”
The two weeks before the meeting saw public vitriol from regents and advocates for and against affirmative action. One regent, Ralph C. Carmona, issued a public paper calling for the board to table any proposals on affirmative action until the regents had discussed the issues more thoroughly.
Five days later, Mr. Connerly released the proposals to end race-based programs. Mr. Connerly had promised the proposals in January when he announced that he was troubled by some of the university’s policies and that he planned to offer alternatives. The board had then spent six months reviewing current policies.
Four days later, University of California President Jack Peltason released a letter asking the board to delay its vote so that faculty leaders could review campus policies and recommend a course of action if the ballot initiative passes in 1996. Mr. Peltason added that however the board voted, officials had decided to discontinue some admissions and hiring practices that use racial preferences because they were “inappropriate” or were no longer needed.
Then four regents released a blistering letter to President Peltason. They charged that the administration had played down the role of race in some admissions practices, and asserted that, while the faculty has a role in setting admissions criteria, the board should make major policy decisions. They also said Mr. Peltason had sidestepped questions of how racial preferences affect academic quality.
The affirmative-action policies built by the nine-campus university over the last 30 years have helped make it one of the most diverse systems in the country. Almost 4 per cent of the 162,300 students are black, 25 per cent are Asian American, and 12 per cent are Latino. The university admits all students who graduate in the top eighth of their classes, although they may not be accepted by their first-choice campus. Campuses select 40 to 60 per cent of their freshmen solely on academic strength. Other admissions decisions consider students’ backgrounds, including their ethnicities.
Part of Mr. Connerly’s proposal was to raise the proportion of students who must be admitted solely on academic criteria to a range of 50 to 75 per cent, by January 1997.
Jeannie Wong contributed to this article.
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