University of Calif. marks admissions milestone

What has it all meant?
Florida figures released last fall showed black students made up 13.7 percent of enrollment in state universities, compared with 14.2 percent when One Florida was implemented in 1999.

At the University of Texas at Austin, minority enrollment dropped after the 1996 federal court ruling but has since rebounded. Last fall, 1,914 black students enrolled compared to 1,911 in 1996.

University of Michigan officials say they won't defy the ban on race-based admissions, but they won't give up on diversity.

"We don't believe that we can deliver a 21st-century education if we're not a diverse learning community," said Julie Peterson, associate vice president for media relations and public affairs.

The year Brooks enrolled, 14 black students were admitted to UC's Boalt Hall School of Law, but none attended. He'd been admitted the year before but deferred admission, making him the last black student admitted under the old affirmative action policies.

Last fall, 13 black students enrolled, a big increase from 1997 but still below the mid-'90s totals of 20 or more.

And with more blacks and Hispanics graduating from high schools now than 10 years ago, the gap between those numbers and UC enrollment has widened.

"The bottom line on Proposition 209, from where I sit, is it has continued to suppress enrollment," said Ed Tom, director of Boalt admissions.

But does it matter if the numbers of black students dip at elite campuses?

"Not to me it doesn't," said Connerly. "As long as all of our kids have an equal chance to get an education."

Unintended beneficiary: Asian students
Interestingly, Asians, who did not benefit under affirmative action, now make up 36 percent of admissions, up from 33 percent in 1997. That makes Asians overrepresented since California is roughly 44 percent white, 35 percent Hispanic, 12 percent Asian and nearly 7 percent black.

Connerly thinks the growth in Asian admissions since '97 shows they were being discriminated against under the old system.

But Van Nguyen, a Berkeley student of Vietnamese descent and member of a task force studying the impact of dropping affirmative action, also sees discrimination in the new system.

"I don't think it's a liberal-conservative issue," he said. "It's really, Do you believe in equality? Do you believe in access? Do you believe in everyone having an equal shot to get to Berkeley? If you believe that then we need to really rethink this (Proposition) 209 issue."

Brooks recalls sitting on the law school steps reading bar exam passage rates broken down by race. "I remember thinking: `Well, that's going to be fun when I take the bar,'" he said. "'It's either going to be 100 or zero.'"

In 2000, he did pass the bar. He became active in diversity issues, serving on the state bar's ethnic minority relations committee.

Brooks sees a way for affirmative action to consider merit, but he doesn't think it's time to banish the concept. "I think that it's useful in that it remedies past discrimination," he said.

But Connerly thinks "most Americans are with me. They realize that this thing has probably outlived its usefulness and it's just a question of how it's going to end and when it's going to end, not whether it's going to end."

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