By George Neumayr on 7.15.02 @ 12:02AM
To get into college in California it helps to have attended an accredited school of hard knocks.
In April, the Wall Street Journal's conservative
editorial page hailed the increase in the number of blacks and
Hispanics at University of California campuses as a "remarkable
achievement." Last Friday, ironically enough, the Wall Street
Journal's front page -- where the liberals at the paper work
-- exposed these numbers as hollow. "To Get Into UCLA, It Helps to
Face 'Life Challenges,'" read the story's mildly mocking title.
The Journal's story makes it devastatingly clear that
UC officials open the door wide for blacks and Hispanics while
closing it on bright Asians like Stanley Park. Though Park
experienced the same "life challenges" as Blanca Martinez -- and
scored 390 points higher than her on the SATs -- she got into
Berkeley and UCLA while he didn't, reports the
Journal.
"It is simply shameful that it is worth less to be poor and
Asian than to be poor and Hispanic," a UC critic told the
Journal.
The average SAT score for Hispanics at UCLA is 1168; the average
for Asians is 1344 (the average score for Asians rejected by UCLA
is higher than 1168.) What explains this gap? Left-wing social
engineering. UC officials want a college system that looks like
California, not Japan. An objective standard can't achieve this
political goal, so they have adopted a subjective one. Woe to the
applicant who has made the mistake of not being born in the barrio
or the ghetto.
The following "life challenges" impress UCLA admissions
officials, according to the Journal: "immigration
hardships, living in a high-crime neighborhood, having been a
victim of a shooting and having long-term psychological
difficulties."
Since nobody has shot at Stanley Park recently, UCLA and
Berkeley told him to take his 1500 SAT score elsewhere. Asians just
don't live in the right neighborhoods.
"At Mr. Park's University High in Irvine, where the student body
is 50% non-Hispanic white and 41% Asian-American, UCLA acceptances
plunged to 69 students this year from 89 last year, and Berkeley
admissions fell to 47 from 63," reports the Journal.
"Principal Diana Schmeizer thinks she knows why: 'Our students come
from stable homes and their parents are teachers, doctors, and
lawyers. It feels as though the kid who works very hard and comes
from an upper-middle-class family is in fact the disadvantaged
student' under the new admissions criteria. She has in mind
students such as Albert Shin, an engineer's son turned down by UCLA
and Berkeley despite a 1540 SAT score."
Meanwhile, Susana Pena is UCLA-bound with an anemic 940 on the
SAT. "Once in a while, they should give us a little break so we can
catch up to them," she said to the Journal. Dania Medina,
who "scored just 410 out of 800 on her verbal SAT," will be a Bruin
too, reports the Journal. UCLA was evidently impressed by
her last name and by "her admissions essay about having a sister
with Down syndrome."
UC "outreach" officials encourage disadvantaged Hispanics to lay
it on pretty thick in their application essays. Under the direction
of one such official, Rosaura Novelo wowed UCLA with an application
essay in which she observed that her Mexican immigrant father gets
"only minimum wage." The Journal says, "UCLA admitted her
despite an SAT score of 980."
The UC system once made a plausible claim to academic
excellence. No more. Now it is mainly a liberal fantasy camp.
Explicit affirmative action was banned by Proposition 209. But UC's
back door is still off its hinge.
If the number of blacks and Hispanics at UC schools rises as
standards fall, where is the achievement? And if old grievances are
solved by creating new ones, where is the progress?
topics:
Law, Immigration
