UC Policies on VIP, Law School Admissions

Re “UC Regents Derail Vote on Ending VIP Admissions,” May 16:

Regarding preferential treatment for entrance to the University of California, I believe it’s a complex issue that deserves a closer look. I am a graduate of UC Davis. I absolutely abhor the idea that you can buy your way into any educational entity. However, I don’t believe most people donate to get their children into college. Donors usually give from the heart; most from their positive experiences in the UC system.

I believe the quality of my education was enhanced through generous benefactors who enabled the universities to purchase state-of-the-art equipment and maintain top-notch facilities. If we think all this can be done simply through state funding and our tax dollars, we are fooling ourselves. The CEO of my former company donates to the UC system, which educated him, not because he wants something in return, but because he received something from it. Will his children get into the UC schools of their choice? Probably, but because of him, one more student like myself can be educated in a top-notch school rather than a mediocre one.

PATTY RHEE

Pasadena

* It is with good reason the Constitution distinguishes racial preferences from others such as wealth, power and inheritance. We as a nation decided some 33 years ago that valuing people according to racial identity is immoral, destructive and just plain unfair. No amount of logical contortionism will make the Constitution read otherwise.

Is it The Times’ opinion (editorial, May 19) that the preference for children of alumni, regardless of skin color, should be banned? I don’t recall ever reading that opinion outside of the context of the racial preferences/penalties debate. Though I suppose to the poor white it makes no difference, for he or she is penalized at birth under either system.

SEAN A. SMITH

Mission Viejo

* Re “UC Law Schools’ New Rules Cost Minorities Spots,” May 15:

Linda Wightman’s New York University Law Review study says that blacks compete effectively to graduate from law schools and to pass the bar exam. She concludes blacks would be denied a legal education without affirmative action in law school admissions. This mutilation of logic is so obviously wrong that the conclusion does not even qualify as specious.

Her study, in fact, makes a powerful case for the opposite conclusion: If blacks can compete effectively in and after law school, clearly they can also compete effectively for admission. Thus lies exposed yet another tawdry example of core liberal racism: the unrelenting belief that minorities must have special help because they are incapable of accomplishment on their own. This is condescending, elitist, racist nonsense; unfortunately it is also typical of leftist self-appointed social engineers.

ANDREW K. GABRIEL

Altadena