University of Calif. marks admissions milestone

updated 5:32 p.m. ET May 7, 2007

BERKELEY, Calif. - A fit of spring-cleaning led Eric Brooks to a box of old newspaper clips from 1997. That's when he was the lone black student enrolled in the incoming law school class at the University of California, Berkeley, following the end of affirmative action admissions.

He didn't read them. That box doesn't hold pleasant memories.

"I felt bad for myself at the time because of my situation, but worse for the people who were denied admission," said Brooks.

Ten years later, the numbers of underrepresented minorities at UC have rebounded at the undergraduate level, although they haven't kept pace with high school graduation rates. But more blacks and Hispanics are also going to lesser-known branches of the 10-campus system and fewer to the flagships of Berkeley and UCLA.

Meanwhile, the movement toward race-blind admissions is spreading in the United States. The states of Florida, Texas and Michigan have rewritten their admissions rules. Ward Connerly, the UC regent who started it all, is taking his campaign for race-blind admissions to as many as five more states next year, including Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arizona.

"If things unfold the way I am predicting they will unfold," Connerly said, "I think we are witnessing the end of an era."

A matter of definitions
The debate over affirmative action begins with how you define affirmative action.

To Connerly, it's a system of "racial preferences" that drive a wedge between people. To his opponents, it's a way to recognize that not everyone starts with the same advantages.

The debate came to UC in 1995 when, in a bitterly contested 14-10 vote, the system's governing Board of Regents voted to stop looking at applicants' race, effective for graduate students in 1997 and for undergrads the following year.

In 1996, Connerly took the movement statewide with Proposition 209, which banned consideration of race in public hiring, contracting and education.

A similar measure passed in Washington state in 1998, and Texas affirmative action policies fell in 1996 with a federal appeals court ruling.

In Florida, Connerly launched a campaign similar to Proposition 209. Then-Gov. Jeb Bush opposed the measure as divisive but implemented his own "One Florida" plan eliminating the use of race or gender in higher education and government hiring.

The tide seemed to turn in 2003 when the Supreme Court, ruling in two University of Michigan cases, said race could be used as a limited factor in college admissions.

But Connerly and his supporters countered with a successful initiative last fall banning consideration of race in Michigan admissions.

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