Speakers Feud Over Race and Education

About a hundred students and Berkeley residents crammed into an auditorium yesterday at the Boalt Hall School of Law to revisit a long-divisive subject in the UC system: whether race should be considered as a factor in the UC admissions process.

Two panelists, a civil rights lawyer and the co-author of Proposition 209, butted heads over the effects of the passage of the proposition-a 1996 initiative that banned public universities in California from granting preferential treatment based on race in admissions.

Shanta Driver, the national co-chair of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary, lamented the plunge in the number of black and Hispanic undergraduate admits at UC Berkeley after the passage of Proposition 209, which she said has created a "reign of terror" on UC campuses.

Only 2.5 percent of incoming freshman at UC Berkeley this year identify as black, showing the growing inequality on campus, she said.

"California is a majority-minority state, and now we are faced with the possibility of having a California with the best public education options being reserved for the white minority." Driver said.

Manny Klausner, co-author of Proposition 209, argued that UC Berkeley's comprehensive review policy for admitting students-which takes into consideration extracurricular activities, personal hardships and exceptional talents-shows that affirmative action still exists on the UC Berkeley campus.

The term affirmative action, Klausner said, is misleading.

"Affirmative action is broader than racial preferences. One kind opens up a door and the other looks at race and lowers the bar," Klausner said.

The two panelists battled over how to define merit in the college admissions process.

Klausner argued that reading retention and exam scores were necessary standards in choosing an admit. Driver countered that merit is the capacity to learn, to think creatively and to achieve at a university level-none of which, she said, were factors in UC admission.

Driver fiercely attacked the "lie of meritocracy," saying that standardized tests and grade point averages are biased. Driver said testing companies deliberately put in questions biased in favor of white students.

Driver urged the students in the audience to mobilize and fight for the re-implementation of affirmative action at Berkeley.

"We can have a race-caste system that is protected by law, or we can extend opportunity to all students by defending affirmative action here in California and across the nation," Driver said, as some students stood up and cheered.

But Klausner countered by saying affirmative action means opening the door to those that have had a disadvantage so that admissions is not just a question of race.

"I believe that government-based racial preferencing is wrong," Klausner said over booing from the crowd. "The grand message of the Civil Rights Movement was that we should not treat people differently because of race."

Klausner, ignoring shouts from the audience that he was racist, argued that race-based admissions causes race to become synonymous with disadvantage.

Klausner said it was unfair that low-income white students or low-income Asian students be streamlined to a lower position in the admissions process than a wealthy black or a privileged Hispanic.

The ban on affirmative action first took effect with the freshmen class of 1998, in which the school witnessed a more than 50 percent drop in underrepresented minorities within a single year.

Dean of Boalt Hall Christopher Edley moderated the debate and made his closing remarks by answering a question from an audience member about whether he believed his race was a consideration in his appointment.

"I hope that my race played a substantial part in my appointment because if people weren't paying attention to my race, they weren't paying attention to who I am and what kind of dean I hope to be."

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