IN THIS ISSUE

Eva Paterson: Vote as If Your Life Depended On It!

EJS Amicus Brief Charges Unlimited Campaign Spending Limits Rights of Communities of Color and the Poor

Stanford Law Review Study on Affirmative Action in Law Schools Marred by Questionable Data

EJS in Hawai'i: Praxis and Pono

Notes on the Right: Voter Participation and the Right

Civil Rights and Campaign Finance: Summaries of Key Law Review Articles

Preserving Access at the University of California

Staff/Board News and Notes

Become a Part of the Equal Justice Society

EJS Calendar

Newsletter Editors:
Elaine Elinson
Joe Lucero

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Preserving Access at the University of California
By Bill Kidder, Research Associate

EJS has been active on several fronts in the past few months to ensure that students of color and those from low-income and immigrant backgrounds have equal opportunity to attend the University of California, America’s largest premiere public institution of higher learning. 

This year has certainly been both the best of times and the worst of times at UC.  The good news is that in large measure because of successful outreach and enrichment programs, the proportion of African American and Latino public high school graduates in California who are eligible for admission at UC’s eight campuses doubled between 1996 and 2003 (EJS defended these very same outreach programs by blocking Governor Schwarzenegger’s mid-year budget cuts this Spring).

The bad news is that instead of rewarding these students’ achievement, UC is making  eligibility criteria more restrictive, with a  disparate impact on underrepresented populations.  Moreover, at Berkeley and UCLA, African Americans, Latinos, and American Indians combined were only 15% of freshmen admits in 2004, compared to 26% in 1995, before Proposition 209.

Given these challenges, EJS is working in partnership with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, MALDEF, Asian Law Caucus, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Greenlining Institute, UC Student Association, and others to fight for equitable admissions criteria.  EJS and retired UC associate president Pat Hayashi, with a research grant from UCLA’s Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies, are studying equitable UC admission policies, such as lessening reliance on the SAT and ending bonus credits for Advanced Placement courses.  We published op-eds  in newspapers around the state urging the UC Regents to take responsible steps to preserve diversity and fairness. [To read the op-eds, click here.]

EJS achieved a modest victory in September, when, in an unusual move, the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) voted not to approve its own draft report on UC eligibility.  This report was predisposed to defending the role of  the SAT based upon opinion rather than evidence.  EJS filed comments with the Commission highlighting research establishing that SAT scores correlate more strongly with social background factors than either high school grades or freshmen grades at UC.  For example, the chart below displays the link between family income and SAT scores in  California.  Our information was helpful in persuading the Commission not to issue its controversial report shortly before the UC Regents voted on eligibility changes.

The September U.C. Regents meeting became a showdown over new restrictions on eligibility for incoming freshmen.  EJS and others were partly successful in persuading the Regents to adopt changes that had the least adverse impact on students of color.  Armed with UC admission data broken down by legislative district, EJS and our partners testified against raising the GPA requirement.  The Speaker of the Assembly and the Lieutenant Governor, both of whom are ex officio UC Regents, also spoke out against the resolution.  In response, the UC Office of the President scaled back its proposal to restrict eligibility;  in the end, the Regents raised the minimum high school GPA from 2.8 to 3.0.

We faced a major setback in October, when Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed Assembly Bill 2387, sponsored by Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh, the Lawyers’ Committee, and MALDEF, and supported by EJS.  The bill would have changed California’s Education Code to allow for the consideration of race along the lines endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger. 

And EJS executive director Eva Paterson continues to debate and debunk UC Regent and anti-affirmative action maven Ward Connerly.  This time they addressed a national conference of journalists, sponsored by the Knight Fellowship in Washington, D.C.  Paterson also distributed a factsheet disproving Connerly’s principal arguments against affirmative action, for the journalists’ easy future reference. [Click here for Myths and Facts on Affirmative Action.]