It Works at UCLA

Many Americans are feeling natural anxiety over a shrinking economic pie and rising competition for college admissions and good-paying jobs. Instead of addressing those issues head-on, some are wrongly but successfully talking up affirmative action as a reason why many in the middle class are losing ground. Under these political conditions, it takes courage to stand against the prevailing anti-affirmative-action winds. UCLA Chancellor Charles Young has done so.

Young, the 26-year chancellor of the University of California’s largest campus, is on a mission--to tell the true story of affirmative action at UCLA. It’s a success. Young is operating under the assumption, wholly proper, that inclusion and integration are still key goals in the multicultural tapestry that is America. “The notion that we’re doing it for ‘them’ is wrong,” he said. “This is something that we do for all of us.”

Young’s message is an important one that deserves repeating, again and again. It’s unfortunate that he stepped on the message last week by comparing a black UC regent who opposes affirmative action to onetime segregationist U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Young has duly apologized for that remark. His central point, however, must not be lost: A public university’s obligations to be fair to society and to be fair to individuals are not mutually exclusive.

UC’s policy is that no student be admitted solely on the basis of race or ethnicity. Young said in a speech this week that up to 60% of UCLA’s freshman class are chosen based on academic criteria. “But we’ve learned that these measures alone don’t tell the whole story of a student’s potential.” Indeed, the purely academic records of great leaders in business, arts, science and politics more often than not are decidedly mediocre.

The other 40%, Young added, are admitted to UCLA on the basis of both scholastic and supplemental factors, including ethnicity, income status, physical and learning disabilities, educational disadvantage and special talents. “The result is that UCLA enrolls the highest-qualified students from all ethnic groups, all income levels, all family backgrounds, all life experiences--broadly representative of the state. And all of them are qualified to be here.”