By Andrew Edwards
DAILY BRUIN REPORTER
aedwards@media.ucla.edu
Though Californians will not vote on the Racial Privacy Initiative until 2004, the University of California Board of Regents may discuss the controversial item by year’s end.
Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a regent by virtue of his position, asked the board to review the RPI within the next six months to discuss its effects on the UC.
Regent Ward Connerly is spearheading the campaign. He also backed Proposition 209, which in 1996 banned the use of racial and gender preferences in hiring by state agencies.
The RPI would prohibit the state from collecting information on race in most areas of government business. It will appear on the March 2004 ballot, after failing to qualify for the upcoming November election.
The outcome of the regents’ discussion will have a strong impact at the polls, said Student Regent Dexter Ligot-Gordon.
“If the university comes up for or against this, people are going to listen,” he said.
A hot topic in the debate is what effect, if any, the RPI will have on UC research.
“(Bustamante) wants to review whether withholding this information will hurt researchers,” said Luis Vizcaino, a spokesman for Bustamante.
One of Bustamante’s major concerns was possible dire effects on public health research by the university.
“The health of countless individuals may be at stake and that is why the UC Regents need to review this initiative very carefully,” Bustamante said.
But the initiative has a “clear and explicit” exemption for medical research, said Kevin Nguyen, spokesman for the American Civil Rights Coalition, a group chaired by Connerly to end racial classification by the state.
Connerly said it is appropriate for the regents to review the RPI, but added that any concern about whether the measure would pose as an obstacle to health research is a “red herring.”
“You can argue whether it’s appropriate to have a color-blind government on the merits of the issue; that makes sense. To engage in scare tactics does not make sense,” he said.
However, regents’ concerns are not limited to medical research.
Ligot-Gordon – who plans to focus his work on the initiative – said the RPI would impact university policies concerning outreach, employment, contracting and other areas of research.
“(The RPI) will fundamentally impact our ability to carry out our institutional mission,” he said. “It’s going to devastate what we do as a university.”
But Nguyen said racial classifications are not crucial to the university.
“Under the status quo the state does not track people along the lines of religion or sexual orientation but that does not prevent studies from being released,” he said.
Connerly said he does not expect the regents to support the RPI.
“I would suspect that the regents would probably vote to oppose it,” he said.
Bustamante has also requested that the California State University Board of Trustees review the initiative.