University of California regents search for ‘legal ways’ to encourage/recruit potential minority students

The LATimes reports today that University of California regents, alarmed by a ‘significant’ drop in minority enrollment at some of their universities in recent years, have decided to conduct a study of the effects of the ten-year old California-voter approved Propostion 209. Larry Gordon with the LAT writes:

SAN FRANCISCO β€” Alarmed by declining numbers of African American students at UCLA and other campuses, University of California regents on Wednesday decided to study the effect of the state’s 10-year-old ban on affirmative action on UC admissions and student enrollment.

The inquiry, officials emphasized, will not focus on ways to overturn or subvert Proposition 209, the 1996 voter approved-measure that forbids consideration of race and gender in admissions and hiring decisions at the state’s public colleges and other institutions.

But by examining the initiative’s effects, UC may be able to figure out legal ways to recruit and admit more black and Latino students, the officials said.

“As we plan for the future, we must know if we are doing everything we can, within the legal parameters, to advance the excellence and diversity of the university,” said student regent Maria Ledesma, a UCLA graduate student in education who, along with regent Frederick Ruiz, proposed the study.

Whatever happened to gaining entrance into a university based on your merits? Why is that basic, simple concept so hard for diversity-pushers to understand? Is having a ‘diverse’ student body more important than having students on campus who are there based not on whether they are black or Latino, but smart enough to be there in the first place? Natural diversity, where students of all shapes, sizes, colors, backgrounds, and nationalities who meet the qualifications for entrance into a unversity, is perfectly fine – ideally, that’s how our system should operate. But thanks to do-gooders like Maria Ledesma, forced diversity at the expense of bending the rules for people who may not otherwise qualify is top priority. This is insulting to students who worked hard to get where they are without any special treatment, and more insulting to minorities who are essentially being told that you’re not smart enough to get a college education so we make special recruiting rules just for you.

Presuming for a minute that Proposition 209 is the reason minority enrollment has dropped in UC unviersities, so what? That would mean that UC universities are actually judging enrollment applications based on their merits (gasp!) and those who don’t meet the requirements are not being accepted – as per the law.

What a concept!

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