Notice, May 1996



Letters to Notice

Roper Poll Reporting

To the Editor:

I am frankly puzzled by Notice's bald assertion [March 1996] that a Roper Center survey "found that 52 percent [of UC] Senate members were in favor of using race or gender as criteria in admissions decisions, while 34 percent opposed such action." This finding is literally a "half-truth" -- half of what the survey discovered, and half that is cast into doubt by the other half, which Notice unaccountably omitted.

The Roper survey also asked the following question: "First, the University should grant preferences to women and certain racial and ethnic groups in admissions, hiring and promotions. Second, the University should promote equal opportunities in these areas without regard to an individual's race, sex, or ethnicity. Which statement, the first or the second, describes the policy you think the University should pursue?" Forty-eight percent of the respondents preferred the second statement -- promotion of equal opportunities without regard to race, sex, or ethnicity. Thirty-one percent chose the first, 3 percent said both, and 12 percent said neither.

This, it seems to me, is an important finding. The truth, I suppose, must be somewhere between the 52-34 pro-race/sex-preference number and the 48-31 anti-race/sex-preference number. Where exactly the truth falls is hard to tell. But giving only half the truth strikes me as unsound.

--Professor Eugene Volokh,UCLA