Chancellor Must Boost Minority Enrollment

At UC Berkeley, this year's freshman class will see yet another drop in underrepresented minority (black, Chicano/Latino, and Native American) students. The number of black admits fell by one-third to only 2.5% of the freshman class. Only one black freshman is entering the School of Engineering. These numbers are abysmal and unacceptable.

California is now a majority-minority state, and underrepresented minority students comprised more than 42% of this year's graduating high school students. Yet Cal stands out as the shame of the UC system, having admitted what is now the smallest proportion of underrepresented minority freshman admits (14.8%) of any UC campus. The UC system overall admitted 20% underrepresented minority students.

UC Berkeley should be the state's trailblazer at achieving a truly integrated and diverse campus, representative of all the people of California. However, UC-Berkeley now has the notoriety of admitting the state's most segregated freshman class.

The introduction of a new chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, gives students an important opportunity to reverse this decline. Outgoing Chancellor Robert Berdahl acknowledged his administration's inability to achieve its goals of increasing underrepresented minority enrollment as a major failure. When Birgeneau takes office in October, he has an obligation to put forward a plan to address this crisis now.

The nation's highest court, in its landmark Grutter v. Bollinger ruling on June 23, 2003, established affirmative action as the law of the land. This victory of the new civil rights movement gives legal, political, and moral sanction for Birgeneau to use aggressive efforts under the law to increase underrepresented minority students.

The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, & Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) is launching a mass campaign to present these four demands on Birgeneau:

1. Issue a public statement declaring the plain and obvious truth: the anti-affirmative action Proposition 209 has had tragic consequences for UC Berkeley, and the various post-209 UC outreach efforts and admissions gimmicks have failed to achieve diversity without meaningful affirmative action efforts. The University of California can no longer pursue its educational mission of serving all Californians and establishing a diverse campus without affirmative action.

2. Declare that a top priority of the new administration is reversing the drop in underrepresented minority enrollment, and that he will use every measure possible under the law to do this.

3. Outline specific policies that concretize this declaration of commitment.

4. Ensure that undergraduate admissions officers and graduate and professional programs may do everything they legally can to address the lack of underrepresented minority students, including any measures that other UC campuses have so far used more aggressively than Berkeley.

Students at Berkeley, by campaigning for the new chancellor to reverse the drop in underrepresented minority enrollment, can take a lead in changing history and moving the entire state in the direction of increased opportunity and progress. BAMN urges everyone to join the new civil rights movement by signing our mass petition and joining this October's Day of Action to move UC Berkeley and California forward.

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