By Andrew Edwards
DAILY BRUIN REPORTER
aedwards@media.ucla.edu
Regent Ward Connerly has suggested the University of California Board of Regents consider an external audit on the first year of comprehensive review, in addition to an Academic Senate audit to be released in the fall.
The internal review is being conducted by a subgroup of the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, a committee of the Academic Senate. In an internal letter to the regents, Connerly suggested the board consider an outside audit.
Comprehensive review, approved by the regents last year, takes personal experiences and life challenges into heavier account with academic achievement in UC admissions. It also ended the UC’s practice of admitting 50-75 percent of incoming freshmen by academics alone.
Connerly – who voted in favor of comprehensive review – made the suggestion after national publications printed columns criticizing the policy.
In an Aug. 4 column in the Washington Post, UC Berkeley linguistics professor John McWhorter called comprehensive review a “canny end run around 1996’s Proposition 209,” and syndicated columnist Linda Chavez wrote on Aug. 7 that UC admissions figures show that race was a factor in evaluations of hardship experienced by applicants to the university.
Connerly said the columns raise critical questions about UC admissions policy.
“If those statements are true, they are an account ... that the university is engaging in racial discrimination and violating the constitution of California,” he said.
“If we are sued by somebody because some of our administration is fudging this thing, or breaking the law, it’s going to cost us millions of dollars,” he added.
UC officials believe the columns are an incorrect presentation of comprehensive review.
“All these articles are based on a misunderstanding of the whole thing,” said Chand Viswanathan, chair of the Academic Senate.
“There are lots of people who are objecting to (comprehensive review), saying this is a backdoor policy for getting around 209, but that’s not the case,” he said.
In comprehensive review, “a multitude of various qualities and factors are taken into account,” Viswanathan said.
UC admissions director Carla Ferri agreed comprehensive review is not a way to get around the law, and that it is an improvement over past policy.
“You cannot be reduced to an SAT I score or overall GPA,” she said.
Connerly did not claim admissions officials had violated Prop. 209, though said “intense pressure” by the state Legislature on BOARS and UC faculty to increase admissions of underrepresented students could affect the audit’s objectivity.
“I don’t think they can give a 100 percent apolitical view of the issue,” he said.
Viswanathan did not object to an outside audit, but does not feel it is necessary.
“It never hurts to get an outside opinion,” he said. “(The faculty committee) will be objective ... because the faculty did not say 'comprehensive review is great, let’s accept it blindly.’”
Connerly said he hopes to discuss the issue at the September regents meeting, though the report is not expected to be ready by then.
The internal report will “not at all” be completed by September, Ferri said.