Multiracial Check Box Shot Down

LOS ANGELES-UC Regent Ward Connerly's initiative to institute a multiracial check box on UC's admission application was struck down yesterday at the UC Board of Regents meeting.

The proposal-which would have appealed federal data collection guidelines barring a multiracial category-was shot down in a committee because opponents said it left UC unaccountable for collecting data on racial minorities.

"I'm concerned about disrupting the many years of data on demographics of the student body that this would affect," said UC President Robert Dynes.

Opponents also criticized the proposal for creating inconsistencies in collecting racial data.

Several UC Berkeley students and Berkeley and Oakland high school students protested the proposal at yesterday's meeting, slamming Connerly for what they claimed was an attempt to dilute UC's data collection.

Connerly, an outspoken affirmative action critic, argued that UC has a responsibility to give students the "freedom of choice" to identify as mixed race, calling the current data collection process as a "step backward" for UC.

UC allows applicants to indicate as many ethnicities as apply, but UC only reports the ethnicity that has the least representation.

"We know they are there, but we have created a system that pretended they can't exist," he said.

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