UC to Break Up Ethnic Groups on Application

Following systemwide protests by student groups, the University of California will increase threefold the number of subgroups under the Asian and Pacific Islander categories on its admission application, officials announced Friday.

The announcement from the UC Office of the President comes in the wake of the Count Me In campaign, which united students from all UC campuses to protest what they called the university’s use of the “umbrella term” of Asian on the admission application.

The admission application previously categorized Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders into eight groups, but will now include 23 options.

Asian American categories will include Chinese, Taiwanese, Asian Indian, Japanese, Pakistani, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Malaysian and “other Asian.”

The Pacific Islander category, previously under one heading, will now include Native Hawaiian, Guamanian/Chamorro, Samoan, Tongan, Fijian and “other Pacific Islander.”

The university began collecting data on applicants’ ethnicities more than two decades ago. Currently the application lists 11 possible ethnicity choices as well as three fill-in “other” options.

UC spokesperson Ricardo Vazquez said the university hopes to get a better idea of enrollment of underrepresented groups through the new categories.

“We know that not all Asian groups are the same and we know that there are some groups that are underserved and educationally disadvantaged,” Vazquez said. “This way we would have a better sense of our applicant pool and reach out to all Californians in order to direct our services more appropriately.”

Although Asians as currently defined represent 44 percent of UC students, some subgroups are underrepresented.

The change in the admissions application will be enacted ahead of and will be more extensive than the new ethnicity reporting requirements from the U.S. Department of Education, slated to go into effect during the 2010-11 school year, Vazquez added.

Although the information cannot be used in admissions decisions due to the state’s ban on affirmative action, the university anticipates the information will be helpful in reaching out to underrepresented groups in different ways.

“This information is obviously not used in admissions in UC, but it can be useful for staff advisors, mental health counselors serving Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, UC faculty and graduate researchers who are studying diversity, and student-led outreach initiatives,” Vazquez said.

ASUC President Van Nguyen called the change a “great victory for students,” but said the university needs to take more steps to increase enrollment of underrepresented Asians and Pacific Islanders.

“We need the financial resources from the regents or the state to do the outreach efforts to get more underserved minorities to UC campuses,” Nguyen said.

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