Good News Hunting!
"ADMISSIONS PLUNGE AT U. OF CALIFORNIA FOR 3 MINORITIES." That was the
headline over the lead story in the April 1 edition of the New York
Times . A similarly disturbing message ("Acceptance of Blacks, Latinos to UC
Plunges") topped the Los Angeles Times . The figures did seem grim. At
UC's Berkeley campus, according to the NYT , the share of the three
"underrepresented minorities"--blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians--fell
from 23.1 percent of admitted freshman to 10.4 percent. Black admissions
dropped 57 percent. At U.CL.A., the NYT told us, the three minorities'
share fell from 19.8 percent to 12.7 percent, with blacks down 43 percent. The
fears of opponents of Proposition 209, which eliminated racial preferences in
California's public institutions, seemed to be coming true--despite the efforts
of UC officials to compensate for the end of race preferences by giving an edge
to students who have overcome economic hardships. "This shows that economics
will not substitute for race," said Theodore M. Shaw, the director-counsel of
the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
But those were only the figures for two individual UC campuses; the
university has eight campuses in all. Students who don't get into one campus
sometimes get into another one. And today, two days after the release of the
UCLA and Berkeley numbers, the university president's office released the
figures for the entire UC system. The news wasn't nearly as grim. The total for
the three minorities fell, but only from 17.6 percent to 15.4 percent. The
Hispanic share of admissions fell, but only from 13.2 to 11.9 percent. The
black share of admissions fell, but only from 3.5 percent to 2.8 percent--a
loss of about 250 African-American students over all eight campuses. Even that
number may be misleading, since it doesn't include blacks who chose not to
check the optional box declaring their race. Indeed, the large increase in the
number of students declining to give their ethnic origin was one of the more
striking, and heartening, phenomena in the UC admissions stats (and one the
NYT ignored in its April 1 story). University officials seem to believe
that these "decline to state" students are overwhelmingly whites and Asians,
but nobody knows for sure.
The point isn't that Tuesday's set of numbers was wrong and Thursday's was
right. Presumably they're both right: Black and Latino admissions fell most at
the most selective campuses. And if blacks are now more concentrated at UC's
less desirable Riverside campus (or its famously gorgeous Santa Cruz facility),
that's news in itself. But there was no "plunge" in the overall UC figures, as
the April 1 headlines erroneously imply. ...
And why couldn't both sets of figures have been released on the same day?
Why release the "bad news" first, then let the "good" news out two days later
when it is sure to be buried under the wall-to-wall Paula-Jones-dismissal
coverage? Call Chatterbox paranoid--you won't be the first!--but could it be
that pro-preference university officials want to discredit Prop. 209 by
painting its consequences as more dire than they actually are? ... Terry
Lightfoot, a spokeman for the UC president's office, denies any "motive to tell
a bad story." He says the release of admissions data has always been left up to
the individual campuses, and it simply took a couple of days to calculate the
overall university-wide figures once the UCLA and Berkeley numbers became
available. ... Hmmmm. Almost convincing. ...
For the record, Chatterbox voted for Prop. 209. Even if the number of
minorities at UC were cut by a factor of three, Chatterbox thinks 209 would be
a good bargain, because those who are admitted won't have to worry why. If the
decrease is only from 17 to 15 percent, it's a very good deal. ... Take it
away, Stephan Thernstrom! ...
