Voting by mail ballot, Senate members at UC San Diego and UCLA gave their approval in January and February to resolutions on affirmative action and shared governance that were first passed by their campus Senate assemblies last fall. Both campuses affirmed the assembly resolutions by solid majorities, but the votes also seemed to confirm the notion of a UC faculty that is deeply divided on the subject of affirmative action.
The San Diego balloting, conducted in January, asked Senate members to vote for or against a resolution passed on November 28 by the UCSD Representative Assembly. That resolution called on the UC Regents to rescind their affirmative action votes of last July on grounds that the Regents' actions violated traditions of shared governance at UC, inserted partisan politics into UC affairs, and improperly overturned faculty decisions on admissions and faculty hiring. Fifty-seven percent of the UCSD Senate members voted to support the November resolution, while 43 percent voted against it. There was a 46 percent voter turnout, with 611 of the 1,323 UCSD Senate members returning ballots that had been sent to them. The last comparable "issues" ballot measure put before UCSD Senate members -- on the question of faculty rewards in 1992 -- resulted in a 38 percent voter turnout.
At UCLA, the issue on the ballot was whether to confirm or rescind a resolution on shared governance and affirmative action passed by the UCLA Legislative Assembly on November 9. That resolution also called on the UC Regents to rescind their July votes, on grounds similar to those mentioned in the UCSD resolution. Fifty-nine percent of the UCLA Senate members voted to confirm the November resolution, while 41 percent voted to rescind it. There were 844 ballots cast, a turnout of about 30 percent of UCLA's 2,800 Senate members.
The Los Angeles and San Diego votes came on the heels of a poll of UC Senate members conducted in December for the conservative California Association of Scholars by the Roper Center for Public Opinion. That survey found that 52 percent UC's of Senate members were in favor of using race or gender as criteria in admissions decisions, while 34 percent opposed such action. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed favored using these criteria in employment and contracting practices, while 39 percent opposed.