Prop. 209 Puts UC at Competitive Disadvantage, Say Officials
California educators looking for creative ways to improve diversity.
By Edwin Okong’o
Berkeley, Calif.
Barred by a California state law that prohibits the use of race in hiring and public college admissions, top University of California officials and scholars said recently that there is an urgent need to come up with creative ways to improve diversity.
Speaking at the “Equal Opportunity in Higher Education: Past and Future of Proposition 209” forum at UC-Berkeley late last month, educators said diversity was essential for the system to compete with private institutions and remain a top research university.
“We are being eaten alive by our private competitors,” said John B. Oakley, a law professor at UC-Davis and chair of its Academic Senate.
Approved by nearly 55 percent of California voters in 1996, Prop. 209 forbids the state, cities, counties and public educational institutions to “discriminate, or grant preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin” in education, employment and contracting.
Oakley said because Prop. 209 only applies to publicly funded universities, private universities are free to engage in minority outreach practices to attract under-represented students and faculty.
Since the proposition passed, state-funded universities have been forced to discontinue minority outreach programs to avoid violating the law. As a result, progress has slowed in achieving diversity in public universities. For example, this fall UCLA admitted only 96 Black freshmen, the lowest in 30 years.
