BY OSBORNE HART
SAN FRANCISCO - Demonstrations and rallies denouncing
the July 20 University of California (UC) board of
regents' vote to eliminate affirmative action programs
drew hundreds of protesters during the hours and days
following the decision.
The regents voted 14 to 10 to remove race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity, and national origin as factors in admission policies by 1997; and 15 to 10 to end affirmative action in hiring and contracting by 1996. The officials delayed announcement of their decision until 8:30 p.m.
Affirmative action is "a piece of civil rights history," said Hatem Bazian, a UC Berkeley student and leader of the Affirmative Action Coalition, at one rally of 300 at the campus. "We can't allow them to implement this." Bazian announced a series of pro-affirmative action demonstrations for the nine UC campuses being planned by the systemwide UC Student Association for the opening of fall classes.
The largest protest - more than 700 people - occurred during the 13-hour-long regents' meeting.
Demonstrators, who gathered the night before at the UC San Francisco site, were confronted with barricades and hundreds of campus cops, city police, and California Highway Patrol in riot-gear.
"It will be detrimental for a lot of us. It will create more divisions among students," said one young Latina student picketing the meeting. Ending affirmative action will mean "less understanding among different cultures."
All nine UC campus chancellors have stated their support for affirmative action and condemned plans to end it. There are no clearly defined regulations requiring campus admissions offices to implement the regents' mandate.
In June, California governor and presidential candidate Pete Wilson signed an executive order repealing affirmative action policies for a number of state agencies. He publicly urged the regents to do the same. Also, Wilson supporters are petitioning to get a proposition to eliminate affirmative action policies for California on the November 1996 ballot.
Regent Ward Connerly, a Black businessman and a Wilson political appointee, was the main author of the proposal before the university board.
The UC campuses have an enrollment of more than 162,000 students. The end of affirmative action programs could result in a 75 percent drop in Black student enrollment and a nearly 15 percent decrease of Latino students, according to UC Berkeley administrators.
Commentators have pointed out that the vote to gut affirmative action programs at California's universities does not mean the fight is over.
The vote "could turn out to be more smoke than fire," complained an article in the Wall Street Journal. The big- business paper noted that affirmative action policies can still be applied to students with "economic and as-yet undefined `social' disadvantages."
The regents also approved a provision that rules out any changes in programs that might result "in a loss of federal or state funds for the university." The UC system receives about $2.5 billion a year in federal funds.