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The newly formed Undergraduate Admissions Workgroup held its first meeting Tuesday to develop changes to the undergraduate admissions process in hopes of encouraging diversity on campus.

The seven-member workgroup is composed of students and faculty working to assess and recommend changes to the current undergraduate admissions process.

They hope to formulate a plan to ensure that students from all communities have equal opportunity for admission to UCLA, said Jenny Wood, president of the Undergraduate Students Association Council and member of the workgroup.

The workgroup plans to present a proposal to the UCLA Academic Senate for a vote by December 2006.

The group was formed in response to a sharp decrease in diversity on campus in recent years. The decrease is due to educational inequality in the K-12 system as well as the passage of Proposition 209, Wood said. The proposition, which was passed in 1996, banned the consideration of race in admissions or hiring at California public institutions, including the University of California.

The workgroup pointed to data from various sources that suggested there is an unequal distribution of resources in California public schools along socioeconomic and racial lines. They also discussed how this disparity can be taken into account in the admissions process without violating Proposition 209.

“Our undergraduate admissions policy is not meeting the needs of the California communities,” Wood said. “It should best evaluate and reflect the impediments that educational systems have (regarding) how many teachers and resources they have. Our current admissions policy ... does not mitigate those disparities like it should.”

Students at public schools in poorer areas with more racial minorities tend to have less access to resources such as qualified teachers, advanced classes, counseling and even encouragement to apply to college, said Adrienne Lavine, chairwoman of the Academic Senate and member of the workgroup.

“Not only are there uneven opportunities between schools, there are dramatic disparities,” Lavine said.

She said this prevents students from developing merit that would help them gain admittance to UCLA.

These disparities prevent students from excelling in many areas used as criteria in the admissions process, such as GPA, number of college preparatory classes taken and standardized test scores, said Darnell Hunt, director of the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies and member of the workgroup.

“We use numbers and treat them as wholly objective measures when they’re really not,” Hunt said. “Some people who really deserve to be here are excluded because they are like needles in a haystack that will never get in on a color-blind admissions process.”

Under the current admissions policy, some students from disadvantaged backgrounds are admitted through alternate admissions processes such as Eligibility in the Local Context, which grants UC eligibility to the top four percent of students from each California high school. In addition, a policy called Admissions by Exception grants admission to otherwise ineligible applicants based on special circumstances.

Mitigating factors are also taken into account during the comprehensive review process, which includes methods of evaluation and determined emphasis on academic rank, personal achievement and life-challenge level.

The workgroup addressed strategies to implement change in the current admissions policy, such as additional consideration of unweighted GPA and limited academic opportunities, to assist students who have not had access to sufficient resources to secure their admission to a selective university.

Additional reliance on alternate admissions processes was also suggested.