"they'll be fine"
by elaine chenThe University of California new admissions policy promises to “diversify” UC campuses with less Asians and more white students.
The new UC admissions policy, aimed towards the freshmen of 2012, promises to diversify our campus. Some of the proposed changes for hopeful high school seniors include:
(1) “End the requirement that applicants submit two SAT Subject Test scores.
(2) Narrow from the top 12.5 to the top 9 percent of high school graduates the percentage who will be guaranteed admission to the university system (although not necessarily to the campus of their choice). The eligibility pool will also be expanded from the top 4% to 9% of each high school graduating class in California.
(3) Expand the definition of applicants eligible for a full admission review to include all who complete 11 of 15 required high school courses by the end of their junior year, and achieve a grade-point average of at least 3.0”
A recent LA Times article notes that though the applicant pool is expanded, fewer students will be accepted. “Supporters said the changes will make more students eligible for UC, particularly low-income, rural, black and Latino students who have good grades and test scores but have often been shut out by the subject test requirement” (Gordon). Less waves of incoming freshmen to clog up Sather Gate but more diversity? Sweet! But upon closer observation, it seems like the UC Regents’ definition of “diversity” is different than you’d expect. Looking at the statistics that the UC Regents provide themselves, the new plan reveals that it will actually reduce the number of Asian Americans on campus and increase the white population, while doing nothing for the numbers of blacks and Latinos. I guess diversity to the UC System means more white students.
Here are the projections that the University of California itself shamelessly puts forward to illustrate the surprising impact of admission changes on different racial and ethnic groups:
Groups % of 2007-8 Admits Under Current Policy Estimates of % of 2007-8 Class Admitted Under New Rules
Black 4% 4-5%
Latino 19% 19-22%
Asian 36% 29-32%
White 34% 41-44%
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/05/uc
What do the numbers show? Numbers of blacks and Latinos admits staying the same, while numbers of Asian students dropping. The white population is the only real population to benefit from this, jumping nearly 10%. When UC Regent’s President Mark Yudof was confronted with these statistics, he merely responded that these numbers weren’t entirely accurate (Gordon). Given the lack of Asian Americans in top management levels as well as in Yudof’s own administration, it is not very comforting to know that not more research is being done in light of these not so accurate numbers.
Here is why I’m angry.
1. It tells people that there are too many Asians in higher education, and that our numbers are unfair. We are still the “model minority.”
I’m annoyingly reminded of the New York Times article “Little Asia on a Hill” back in 2007, which made the sweeping claim that Asian Americans were taking spots away from more other candidates. Of course, this is problematic in many ways. Because despite people throwing around that “45%” number around to blame Asian Americans for overpopulation here on the Berkeley campus, many forget about the lack of Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander representation on campus which, yes, fall under the Asian American umbrella term too.
In Fall 2007, the student-run campaign “Count Me In” led the movement to disaggregate categories for Asian Americans on the UC admissions application to accumulate more accurate data and research for the numerous ethnic groups that fall within the broad term of “Asian American.” The motivation for this movement was the stereotype of the Asian American community to be the, “model minority.” They were the racial group that was “making it” in America, proving that the system works and is not racist in any way. What fails to be mentioned with this stereotype are all the Asian groups that disappear and whose stories are not told. The fact remains that the number of Pacific Islanders in California that hold a bachelor’s degree is less than half of the numbers of Asian Americans,
In an interview with Vincent Pan, Executive Director of civil rights organization Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA), Pan notes, “There's still this unspoken either embarrassment or unhappiness that many college universities with high numbers of Asian Americans. That's not something someone will say on record. You don't see other UC presidents noting the high number of Asian American students, if anything there's a joke about it. That's what I'm most concerned about: somehow we're not able to take pride in the success of Asian Americans on these campuses. So when people see large numbers of Asians, somehow it doesn't fit right with everybody and that's what we need to change.”
So before we start shooting off our mouths about Asian Americans flooding our campuses, what about the lack of representation for those communities which are rendered invisible by the generalization of the Asian American community?
2. It is a reminder to me that Asian American interests are not prioritized among the Universities of California.
We have not forgotten having to fight against the system in order to keep our Asian language programs intact (see page 7 by Eunice Kwon). We have not forgotten how blatantly our protests were ignored. We have not forgotten how easily it was decided that Asians languages were not as important, despite the huge numbers of those enrolled and interested in taking these classes.
Although Asian Americans make up a large percentage of the UC student population, how often are Asian American interests served? A recent survey focusing on AAPI Student Life on campus (carried out by our very own hardboiled alumni) reported that UC Berkeley, the center of student-initiated progressive racial reform, still struggles with providing and promoting adequate resources for the AAPI student population. One point that is emphasized is the noticeable lack of Asian American faculty. Within the entire UC system, only 13% of that faculty is Asian American, while white faculty remains a high 78.4%. How often do Asian American students feel like their voices and perspectives are being understood and respected?
Professor Ling-Chi Wang also notes how the UC Regents blatantly ignored the concerns of California Asian American legislators, who collaborated on a letter that urged the UC Regents to postpone implementing the policy until more research on the impact on the various communities will be. However, the UC Regents seemed too eager to push forward the policy.
As if the new UC Admissions FAQ Video didn’t blatantly erase our presence on this campus enough, this new admissions policy chooses to painfully bleach us out of existence. The huge number of Asian Americans who are alumni, who are students, and who are high school students eager to apply don’t seem to really matter to UC policy making. Our presence is too easily ignored.
3. The University of California continues to ignore the protests of Asian Americans, choosing instead to make the decision without us.
What is more aggravating about the policy is UC President Mark G. Yudof’s dismissive reply to Asian American concerns in the LA Times article: “They’ll be fine.”
What’s that mean? The only way that response can be justified is if (1) he understands the experiences, history, and values of the Asian American community in California OR (2) Asian American perspectives and voices were fully represented within the decision-making process. I don’t think either or those things occurred here, so that reply is just a reflection upon Yudof’s ignorance and disinterest of the concerns of the Asian American community.
Please don’t try pitting Asian Americans against other groups of color in order to place the blame of racial inequality into our hands. We are not the problem. I can’t emphasize that enough. Don’t pretend like the problem is not due to the system that has historically, politically, socially favored whites and still favors white. Like this new policy. How did this policy even originate? No doubt from the misconstrued ideas of Asian deluging the UC campus and butting out people of other races. For too long, people whispered that if it weren’t for so many Asians, maybe more spots would be open for black and Latino students, and that Asians are the group that are keeping those groups down (Egan).
As this policy indicates, as history has indicated, as facts and statistics continuously indicate, it’s not Asians that prevent “diversity” on campus. In fact, from this very policy, Asians are the ones who are getting the short end of the stick! Who is to blame then?
I know there has been talk of “racism being over” and America approaching some sort of post-modernism where race just doesn’t mean squat anymore because hey man, we’ve got a mixed race president! How much more progressive can we get? But it’s things like this that becomes a cold reminder that we may have eliminated racial barriers to higher political positions, and we may have overcome segregation in schools, and we may have even overcome media underrepresentation, except… oh wait, we really haven’t. Prejudiced attitudes about different racial groups remain, and it manifests itself harshly in education policy such as these, affecting you, me and everyone else on this campus. Pans notes, “The promise of ‘color-blindness’ has always been a farce. We live in a race-conscious society where race matters. The sooner we acknowledge that, the sooner we can address head on problems related to race and justice.” We can’t just pretend that the system is fair and that race doesn’t matter when consequences like this occur.
“If we are race-conscious, we are much more likely to define and create a UC that works for everyone,” Pan said. I totally agree: because as of now, it is not working for me, and it is definitely not working for my community. Diversity is not just about representation, but fairness, equality, and inclusion. We need to make sure that this is included in the definitions set by the UC Admissions Policy, because anything else would just be half-assed.
Special thanks to:
Christine Hong for her detailed emails and commentary on this new policy.
Professor Ingrid Seyer-Ochi and Professor Ling-chi Wang for their insights and comments.
Vincent Pan for his time and thoughts.
*Note to readers: since this is an ongoing debate, please check our blog for more updates on this, once more information comes out.