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  Daily Bruin File Photo Students attend the 2000 Freshman Convocation last fall. Since the end of affirmative action in university admissions, the number of underrepresented minority students at UCLA has declined.

By Kelly Rayburn

Daily Bruin Reporter

Two of California’s most prestigious private universities reflect the state’s ethnic diversity better than do three of its best public schools – even though the two private schools draw more heavily from outside the state.

In an era when affirmative action is not permitted in University of California admissions, Stanford and USC have slightly higher percentages of African Americans than UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara. And while the UC schools have witnessed declining Latino and African American numbers in recent years, the private schools have not.

The release of data from the 2000 census last month shows California has become more ethnically heterogeneous since 1990. Statistics from each university’s office of budget and planning have fostered comparisons to determine how well the undergraduate portion of the UC and private California universities reflect the state’s ever-changing demographics – the private schools seem to be doing a better job of keeping pace.

Catherine Lhamon, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, a longtime supporter of pro-diversity measures, said the UC has a moral obligation to ensure their school’s demographics closer reflect the state’s – but their hands are tied by Proposition 209, the state initiative that ended affirmative action in 1996.

She called the lack of effort to ensure better diversity “an evil of the loss of affirmative action.”

Kevin Nguyen, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Institute – an organization dedicated to monitoring implementation of Proposition 209 – disagreed, saying race should not be a factor in admissions.

“The UC’s job is not to engage in racial balancing,” he said. “Affirmative action is not constitutional because it inherently involves preferential treatment.

“You cannot talk about eliminating underrepresentation in a finite pie, without, at the same time, talk about suppressing overrepresented groups.”

Stanford and USC are each about 6 percent African American, while the three UC schools are all less 4.4 percent African American.

Neither reach California’s African American population, which is 6.7 percent.

The three UC schools, each with about 15 percent who identified themselves as either Latino or Chicano, have about the same percentage of Latinos as the private schools. But Latino and Chicano percentages at UCLA have fallen off a bit in the last few years after a period of almost 20 years of steady increase.

USC’s Latino and Chicano populations, on the other hand, continue to grow every year, according to Deborah Kac, a demographer in USC’s office of budget and planning.

More than 30 percent of Californians identified themselves as “of Hispanic origin” on the census. But those of Hispanic origin filled out a separate question regarding race – the census bureau does not consider Latino or Hispanic or Chicano to be a racial category. Many who identified themselves as “of Hispanic origin,” checked “Other” on the race question.

Perhaps the most conspicuous difference between the private and public schools is the high number of white and relatively low number of Asian American students attending the two private universities.

Stanford and USC are each about 48 percent white, and about 24 percent Asian American.

At both UCLA and UC Berkeley, Asian Americans outnumber whites. UC-wide, whites make up 36.7 percent of students and Asians 32.2 percent. UC Santa Barbara, which is 63 percent white, is a notable exception.

Asians make up 10.9 percent of the state. Whites account for 59.5 percent of California’s population.

Comparing UC’s ethnic percentages to California’s suggests that whites are underrepresented, along with Latinos and African Americans. Furthermore, comparing UCLA’s demographics to the state’s shows that whites are actually slightly more underrepresented than are African Americans at UCLA. The same is not true UC-wide.

Nguyen was not surprised by the fact that whites make up a smaller percentage of UC schools population than of the state.

“Whites, for a long time, have been underrepresented, but that does not mean the UC is racist,” he said.

American Indians make up 1 percent or less of each of the five schools.

Bob Cox, a demographer with UCLA’s office of Academic Planning and Budget, said conclusions based on comparisons between California’s ethnic breakdown and UCLA’s – while more accurate than comparing UCLA to the United States or Los Angeles County – may not be as telling as they appear to be at first glance.

“There are so many variables, I almost wouldn’t even try (to make a comparison),” he said.

For one, the census and the UC collect data differently. UC data is collected based simply on what a student checked on its application. Also, applicants have more ethnic groups from which to choose than do people filling out the census.

The census does not distinguish between Pilipino and Asian American.

Also, many students do not disclose their ethnic background. Last year, nearly 6 percent of UCLA students declined to state an ethnic identification on their applications. According to Cox, many of those students are probably white.

If that is so, then whites might be better represented than they appear to be.

Cox did say some long-term trends are evident.

In the last 20 years, white percentages have declined, Asian American and Latino percentages have increased, and African American percentages have remained about the same – though those long-term trends have been slightly interrupted by the short-term effects of Proposition 209.

“It hasn’t had as much as an effect as we had feared, though,”Cox said. “On the whole, UCLA is tremendously diverse.”

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