The situation in the University of California is at a crisis point, and everything must be done to increase underrepresented minority student enrollment now. Gov. Jerry Brown should have signed SB 185, which allowed public universities to consider race and gender in admissions to increase underrepresented minority student enrollment.
However, Gov. Brown’s veto message also refers to the importance of BAMN’s pending lawsuit to overturn Proposition 209, the state ban on affirmative action. This is a court case that the new student-led civil rights and immigrant rights movement can win if we mobilize mass action across the state.
BAMN invites all the people and organizations who fought so hard to support SB 185 to support the campaign to overturn Prop. 209.
In July of this year, BAMN won a decision to overturn Proposal 2, Michigan’s version of Prop. 209, in the Sixth Circuit Appeals Court. We intend to win a similar victory for our lawsuit against against Prop. 209 here in California — that will require mobilizing the independent power of the movement again.
One or both of these cases could eventually be heard before the Supreme Court of the United States and will determine whether the doors to higher education may be closed to the nation’s growing Latino, black and other minority communities. These cases will become our generation’s Brown v. Board of Education, our nation’s watershed for racial progress.
As the passage of the California DREAM Act shows, the Latino and other minority communities of California have tremendous social power when we take independent, direct action. Now that we won the DREAM Act, we need to fight for more Latino, black, Native American and other underrepresented minority students to get into the UCs who are otherwise being excluded by Prop. 209. We now have a huge opportunity to correct that historic wrong.
We need to use the next six months to mobilize student action to impact the outcome of the Prop. 209 case before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals hearing. BAMN, the African American studies department, gender and women’s studies department, and the Center for Race and Gender are holding a forum and mass meeting at 7 p.m. on in 102 Wurster Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 11, with Shanta Driver, BAMN’s national chair and lead attorney in the 209 challenge. We invite everyone to join us.
Matt Williams is a senior at UC Berkeley and organizer for BAMN.
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Diversity denies Californians admission to University of California.
How come it costs 50% more (after adjusting for inflation)
for University of California Board of Regents Chair Lansing and President Yudof
to provide the same service?
Total expenditures in the UC system in 1999-2000 were $3.2
billion to educate a student population of 154,000. Converted into 2011 dollars
using the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI calculator gets us to $4.3B in 2011
dollars, which comes out to $27,850 per student.
In 2011, the total UC system budget was $6.3 billion
dollars: an increase of almost 50% after adjusting for inflation. Enrollment
also rose – to 158,000 students, a 3% increase, yielding a cost per student of
$39,750.
Costs went up 50% in
10 years. And yet the news out of UC
President Yudof is that the UC system is “bracing” for ‘another round
of budget cuts’!
Email opinions to UC Board of Regents [email protected]
What’s more interesting than minority “underrepresentation” at UC Berkeley is their laughable overrepresentation in departments that train them in professional whining–you can tell these departments apart from serious academic disciplines by their universal appendage, the word “studies” (departments that actually study things usually don’t feel the need to remind themselves and others that such is the case).
If you want to help minorities, why don’t you encourage them to head over to the northeast section of campus where they can acquire the skills necessary to compete in the modern industrial economy? Seems a more efficacious solution than padding the rolls with underqualified victims whose impending indoctrination in the left-wing propaganda mill will leave them and their communities no better off than before, but will nonetheless provide the Democratic Party a fresh supply of votes.
“provide the Democratic Party a fresh supply of votes”
If you think they’re converts from Republicanism, you’re wrong. They’d have voted D anyhow.
I don’t think Andre was suggesting that they were converts from Republicans, given that we’re talking about illegal aliens.
[What's more interesting than minority "underrepresentation" at UC
Berkeley is their laughable overrepresentation in departments that train
them in professional whining--you can tell these departments apart from
serious academic disciplines by their universal appendage, the word
"studies" (departments that actually study things usually don't feel the
need to remind themselves and others that such is the case). ]
While I certainly don’t disagree with your observation here, the fact of the matter is that in addition to creating an excuse to expand the campus bureaucracy, many of these “victim’ studies” programs were created because those pushing affirmative actions and quotas know damn well that most of the students who benefit from such programs are neither academically prepared nor intellectually equipped to survive math, science or engineering programs, and more likely to wash out or drop out instead of graduating. The tragic part about these AA programs is that many of the parents of these students wind up spending a fair amount of their own hard-earned money on their children’s support while in college, money that they will never be able to pay backsimply because they will either drop out or wind up with a degree that has NO marketable value in the real world.
I think it’s certainly true that AA advocates come to the defense of these “victims studies” departments in part because, in their absence, the beneficiaries of AA would struggle too much to justify its existence. But that’s definitely not how these programs came about in the first place. They’re part of the broader left-wing emphasis on “multiculturalism,” which infected the academy before affirmative action really got into full swing, and pervades even in departments that are supposedly more rigorous–history, for example. Nonetheless, you rightly observe that the programs are vacuous and political and set up participants to fail in a big way.
Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau ($450,000 salary) displaces Californians
qualified for public university education at Cal. for a $50,600 payment by a foreign
student. The need for transparency at UC Berkeley has never been so clear.
UC Berkeley, # 70 Forbes ranking, is not increasing
enrollment. Birgeneau accepts $50,600
FOREIGN students at the expense of qualified instate Californians.
UC Regent Chairwoman Lansing and President Yudof both agree to
discriminate against Californians for the admission of foreigners. Birgeneau,
Yudof, Lansing
need to answer to Californians.
Opinions make a difference; email UC Board of Regents [email protected]
[The situation in the University of California is at a crisis point, and
everything must be done to increase underrepresented minority student
enrollment now.]
Why, just because you say so?
“everything must be done to increase underrepresented minority student enrollment now.”
Does this include a reduction in the overrepresented Asian minority?
And overrepresented women?
And an increase in grossly underrepresented, highly qualified white students from families making between $80,000 and $120,000 per year, who are not eligible for any grant type financial aid, yet are without the financial resources to attend?