With the start of a new academic year, the University of California has found itself knee-deep in a task unprecedented for a major American university: that of dismantling many of the efforts it undertakes that go under the title of affirmative action.
The watershed action taken by the UC Regents on July 20 often has been portrayed as a move intended to "end affirmative action" at UC, but the truth is somewhat more complex. The Regents voted to end affirmative action at UC at certain critical junctures: the point at which admissions decisions are made; the point at which hiring decisions are made; and the point at which contracting decisions are made. Simultaneously, the Regents voted to intensify the "outreach" efforts of the University, which certainly fall under the heading of affirmative action if that term is meant to signify programs that preferentially target members of racial or ethnic minorities. Indeed, the admissions resolution passed by the Regents has, in its final section, language noting that the Regents' policy is intended to "achieve a UC population that reflects this state's diversity," though the means of achieving that goal are acknowledged to have changed.
In the weeks following the Regents' vote, President Peltason and UC's chancellors were at pains to try to get this message across: that the goal remains diversity, though there are now fewer "tools" with which to achieve this objective. It seemed to many faculty and administrators, however, that UC has a well-nigh impossible task in this regard.
"I think it will be a very, very significant challenge to maintain diversity" following the Regents' action, said Michael Drake, the associate dean for admissions at the UC, San Francisco School of Medicine. "If you decrease the amount of power you're able to put into an effort and then ask: 'Will you still be able to go as fast?' the answer is no."
What effect the change will have on UC's enrollment of underrepresented minorities is not clear. UC's undergraduate admissions standards are unaffected by the Regents' action and the University remains committed to offering enrollment on some UC campus to all eligible students. Thus, for regular admissions, the systemwide impact of the Regents' action stands to hinge on two things: the degree to which there is a drop-off in applications from underrepresented minority students and the extent to which students who do not get into their campus of first choice -- often Berkeley or UCLA -- decide to enroll outside the system altogether.
However this central issue plays out, the affirmative action debate has polarized the University into an alignment that probably hasn't been seen since the presidency of Clark Kerr. Prior to the Regents' vote, every major constituency within the University weighed in on the side of retaining affirmative action: President Peltason and his vice-presidents, Academic Senate leaders, all nine chancellors, and student and staff groups. With the Regents' action, all these groups are obligated to enforce, or at least live with, policies they have opposed.
The significance of this has not been lost on supporters of the Regents' action, who suspect that a "culture" of affirmative action will work to maintain the status quo at UC, no matter what the change in rules. "It is the biggest social engineering project in history," affirmative action opponent Fred Lynch told the Riverside Press-Enterprise, "and I think we are going to see how entrenched the system is. Good luck getting it out."
The other side of this coin is that a significant protest movement may arise within UC over the Regent's action. The Regents' September meeting was so severely disrupted by protesters that the public eventually had to be cleared from the meeting site, and a systemwide day of protest over the Regents' decision has been scheduled for October 12. Meanwhile, a systemwide faculty group says it has collected more than 1,100 signatures in a petition that calls for the Regents to rescind their July actions. (See related story.)
For now, however, the central question for UC is how its provisions of the Regents' action will be implemented. As September came to a close, work was proceeding on this question at a brisk pace because of the tight timetables involved.
The Regents passed two resolutions at their July meeting. One of them, SP-2, states that "Effective January 1, 1996, the University of California shall not use race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin as criteria in its employment and contracting practices." The other resolution, SP-1, is effective January 1, 1997 and forbids UC to use these same racial and gender criteria in its admissions policies.
This latter date would seem to leave some room for deliberation, but long lead-times are involved in admissions; for example, the campus publications that will spell out UC's admissions policies for 1997 must be in place by next summer. Meanwhile, faculty and administrators working on SP-2 must have their recommendations in place this month, in order for even brief consultation to take place regarding them before they are set before the Regents at their November meeting -- the last Regents' meeting of 1995.
In the weeks following the Regent's action, a commonplace observation was that there was little in state or federal law that would modify the reach of their resolution on admissions, but that there was so much state and federal regulation concerning hiring and contracting that the Regents' resolution on these practices stood to have little effect. With respect to admissions, the early analysis seems to have been correct.
"I don't see the law restricting the Regent's action at all," says Dennis Galligani, UC's assistant vice-president for academic services. Such law that exists with respect to admissions -- for example, the Supreme Court's Bakke decision -- has to do with what's permissible in affirmative action, not with what's required, he points out.
The initial analysis regarding hiring and contracting may also turn out to be correct, but as the details were being sorted through in August and September, the issues involved seemed very complex, as a look at the hiring question alone indicates.
As a federal contractor and grant recipient, UC is obliged to adhere to federal regulations regarding affirmative action in hiring. Under these regulations, hiring units within the University must monitor their diversity, and must have plans in place to bring their numbers of women and minorities into line with the representation these groups have in so-called "availability pools."
So specific are these requirements that at any given time an academic department, for example, is likely to know exactly how many women or minority members it would need to hire to reach this parity level. Federal regulations do not specify the means by which parity goals are to be achieved, but do require that some plan be in place for achieving them.
The Regents' resolution on hiring and contracting prohibits use of race and gender criteria in hiring but then goes on to say that nothing in the resolution "shall prohibit any action which is strictly necessary to establish or maintain eligibility for any federal or state program . . ." (emphasis added). The intersection of this language with federal and state requirements sets up the complexity. In hiring and contracting, are all of the University's current affirmative action practices "strictly necessary" to keep UC in compliance with federal and state regulations?
The competing mandates from the Regents on the one hand and the law on the other would seem to imply a simple guiding principle: everything that is not required is forbidden. Late-summer implementation reports by the administration essentially took this stance. The goal in hiring and contracting has been to identify UC's affirmative action practices; identify the source of the requirements for each one; ascertain which of them are strictly necessary to adhere to outside regulations; and then modify those that aren't. The task is complex because of the number of affirmative action programs and governmental regulations involved.
However this analysis plays out for University hiring generally, the effect of the Regents' action on faculty hiring may be small. In terms of legal obligations, "We'll still be required to do open job searches, to include language on women and minorities being encouraged to apply in our advertisements, and to show that we're working toward achieving affirmative action goals," says Ellen Switkes, UC's assistant vice president for academic advancement. Prior to the Regents' vote, President Peltason announced that one of UC's faculty affirmative action efforts, the Targets of Opportunity Program (TOP), would be altered so that chancellors may no longer set aside FTEs for affirmative action hires, but Switkes notes that this practice was abandoned some time ago on most campuses.
In terms of meaningful activity, affirmative action probably has had its greatest effect on faculty hiring in the impetus it has provided to departments to conduct wide-ranging national searches within which women and minority candidates are considered; once this is done, actual hiring decisions are overwhelmingly based on the scholarly potential of the candidates reviewed.
Many faculty and administrators fear that the effect that the Regents' vote will be to lessen whatever motivation departments have had to take diversity into account through such means as national searches. In addition, they are fearful that UC will now be perceived by women and minority applicants as a place that would not welcome them.
A Faculty Employment Coordination Team, chaired by Switkes and composed of administrators and Academic Senate officers, began meeting in September to produce a set of recommendations on the changes in faculty employment practices that will be necessitated by the Regents' action. This group is part of a larger Task Force on Academic and Staff Employment, chaired by UC Senior Vice President Wayne Kennedy and Interim Provost Judson King. A task force on contracting issues is expected to be appointed soon.
With no legal strictures blocking it, the Regents' resolution on admissions stands to have all four of its major provisions enforced. The first of these is to end the use of race and gender as criteria in admissions. The second is to increase the proportion of undergraduates admitted by grades and test scores alone. In the past no less than 40 percent and no more than 60 percent of any campus' entering class could be admitted solely through these criteria; as of 1997, the figures will jump to no less than 50 percent and no more than 75.
The so-called "supplemental criteria" will continue to play a role in the admission of the remaining 25 to 50 percent of each class, and a modification of these criteria represents the third change in admissions brought about by the Regents' vote. Such factors as socio-economic status and extra-curricular activities have long been taken into account in a proportion of UC's admissions. In the past, however, race was one of these factors -- or in the view of some the predominate factor.
Now President Atkinson has been charged with conferring with the Academic Senate in order to bring to the Regents a revised set of supplemental criteria; this new roster is intended to meet the twin tests of maintaining diversity while being race- and gender-blind. In undergraduate admissions, a Task Force on Undergraduate Admissions Criteria, co-chaired by Galligani and Academic Council Chair Arnold Leiman, is responsible for coming up with a proposed set of such criteria by December 1, for evaluation by the Senate and the president.
When the Regents acted in July, their critics greeted with much cynicism language about supplemental criteria contained in their admissions resolution. Consideration should be given, the Regents said, to students who have "suffered an abusive or otherwise dysfunctional home or a neighborhood of unwholesome or antisocial influences". Galligani says, however, that Regent Ward Connerly has made clear that this language was meant to be "illustrative" and not restrictive. The Regents' action also is having an effect on graduate and professional school admissions, of course, and another Senate-administration task force, chaired by Assistant Vice President Switkes, will be considering this issue and issuing a report on it.
The final major change in admissions brought about by the Regents' vote has to do with outreach. SP-1 calls for the Regents' chairman to appoint a task force composed of representatives from the business and educational communities who will devise a strategy for increasing the UC-eligibility of a defined group of students -- those specified in the newly revised roster of supplemental criteria.
This task force, which will be co-chaired by a business leader and Interim Provost King, probably will bring its recommendations to the Board next March. It's likely that UC will go to the state at that time to ask for supplemental funding for the enhanced outreach effort that will be recommended, and that financial support for this work also will be sought from the business community.
One UC campus has not waited, however, for this work to be completed to begin its own increased outreach efforts. On September 7, standing in an East Oakland high school, UC, Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien unveiled the "Berkeley Pledge" program, which is intended to "revitalize" the partnership between the campus and the state's K-12 system.
Flanked by four Bay area school district superintendents, Tien committed $1 million to the effort that day. Regent Connerly, true to the sentiments he has expressed all along, was so enthusiastic about the program that he called Tien to tell him he would like to raise $50,000 for it.