“When I first heard that affirmative action was gone from the UC system, I was confused. As an African-American, did I still have a chance to go to UCLA or UC Berkeley? If the state universities only had six percent blacks with affirmative action, what would it be like now that affirmative action was gone?
Here’s what it’s like now:
Number accepted
UCLA 1997 1998 % Change
Black 488 280 -43%
Latino 1497 1001 -33%
Asian American 4154 4187 +.08%
White 3383 3209 -5%
Berkeley 1997 1998 % Change
Black 562 191 -66%
Latino 1266 600 -52%
Asian American 2925 2998 +2%
White 2725 2674 -2%
Source: UCLA, UC Berkeley. Compiled by Los Angeles Times
These numbers are devastating to me. I imagine myself on this huge campus surrounded by people of other races, with no one who looks like me. How will I fit in? How will I warm to a school where the only black faces I see are the 20 members of Black Student Union?
My friend Michelle Thompson said she felt discouraged by the drop in minority admission, too. “These figures are a slap in the face,” said Michelle, a sophomore who hopes to apply to a UC in a few years. “They are just enough to discourage minority students from even applying to the schools where they’re probably not wanted anyway.”
Another friend, senior Ann Anaebere said this just gives her another reason to study. “We [blacks and Latinos] will just have to work harder than before. If UC Berekely’s new freshman class has an average 3.9 GPA, we should meet or surpass that average if we want to get into the school. Even though they’re a little intimidating, these figures should tell us that something is wrong, that we need to work harder if we want to compete like we should.”
It’s a shame UCLA will be less diverse
I met with Dr. Rae Lee Siporin, UCLA’s director of undergraduate admission to find out how she felt about the changes. She said, “It’s really a shame to see things go backwards after you’ve worked so hard for so many years to get improvement and to get significant numbers of students in and then suddenly in one year it’s all going backwards.”
I was surprised that she really wanted to see underrepresented students at UCLA. She made me feel that not everyone is against us—that we do have a chance, even though it seems like we don’t.
I know that a lot of white and Asian American students are glad that affirmative action is gone, glad that “reverse discrimination” has stopped in California. In a way, I understand because I’m going through the same thing. I’m afraid that I won’t get in because of my race—the same fear that whites and Asian Americans had under affirmative action.
But we all need to meet and learn from people who are different from ourselves. Would anyone want to go to a school with only one or two races represented?
As Dr. Siporin put it, “It’s not just that underrepresented students lose because they’re not at UCLA; it’s that the rest of the students who are here are going to lose as well. They won’t have the benefit of being involved with and being challenged by the thinking of these other students.”
There are a number of matters that Dr. Siporin cleared up for me. Some people say that, under affirmative action, underqualified blacks and Latinos were admitted. That’s not true. She said that the program was never used to admit unqualified students. Affirmative action was used to bring a larger number of strongly qualified black and Latino students. For example, if UCLA got 150 great black applicants and 2000 Asian American applicants, the university would try to admit all 150 black students, while still accepting a large number of Asian American applicants.
How can you get in?
If race is no longer a consideration, how can you get into a UC today? At this time, 75 percent of the freshmen admitted by UCLA will be accepted based on grades and SAT/ACT scores, Dr. Siporin said. The rest will be admitted based on extracurriculars, special talents and special circumstances, like if you’re the first person in your family to go to college, or if your family has low income.
Thinking about affirmative action has made me wonder why blacks and Latinos get lower scores. Once I heard a radio talk show host who said it was because of our genes. I think that’s a racist idea. I don’t really have the answers but I think I might have something to do a family’s values and peer pressure.
Many believe that the amount of money a family has influences how the kids do in school. If that was true, then the vast majority of low-income students who apply to UCLA would have poor grades. I was shocked when Dr. Siporin told me that the largest number of low-income students are Asian American and Latino. Black students tend to be middle class, yet their GPAs and SATs tend to be lower. Why? If blacks have lower SAT scores and more money, why wouldn’t they take a test prep course and get tutoring to improve their numbers?
I think Asian American students get pulled up by their peers and encouraged (even pressured) to get good grades. Black students, on the other hand, think that if one of their friends begins to take school seriously, that person is “selling out” when the student may only be looking out for his or her own future.
How can we fix this? There’s a massive issue of motivation. Each UC school has instituted outreach programs to motivate and support minority youth. But Dr. Siporin said that until those programs begin to become effective, “We’re going to lose… [but] we’re going to keep trying to recruit students and get them to understand that UCLA is a good place to be.”
Maybe things will change. Maybe 2,000 Latinos and blacks with GPAs of 4.3 and strong SAT scores will apply to UCLA next year. It would be nice to see them admitted to the top UCs by the thousands rather than by the hundreds. It would be nice if UCLA had 2,800 blacks in this year’s freshman class instead of 280.”