Admissions controversy embroils Berkeley again: regents chairman questions low-scoring SAT admits, leaks report to newspaper - Noteworthy News

Black Issues in Higher Education, Jan 1, 2004 by Pamela Burdman

BERKELEY, CALIF.

Just when it seemed that the University of California was finally moving beyond divisions over race in admissions, a new controversy has erupted at the Berkeley campus, garnering an onslaught of headlines around the state and a rebuke for Regents Chairman John J. Moores.

The turmoil erupted in early October just days after new UC President Dr. Robert Dynes took office, and spilled over into the November regents meeting. It began when a 159-page draft report about Berkeley admissions was leaked to the Los Angeles Times. The author of the critical report was surprising: Moores, all attorney, businessman and owner of the San Diego Padres.

In particular, Moores was suspicious that in 2002, Berkeley admitted 386 freshmen with SAT scores of 1000 or below, while turning down about 3,200 students with SATs above 1400. The low-scorers included 168 Latino students and 73 African Americans.

Moores' public comments were blunt. "They don't have any business going to Berkeley," he told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I think something is very screwy."

UC officials sprang into action to defend the system, noting that Moores' analysis stripped students' grades and test scores of the context that the system's new comprehensive review policy was designed to provide. Dynes assembled a study group to evaluate admissions practices around the system. Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl released a lengthy letter explaining the patterns noted by Moores. And in mid-November. UC Berkeley admissions officers staged a simulated scoring session to demonstrate how applicants are evaluated.

There were specific explanations. Of the high-SAT students who were rejected, for example, Berkeley officials noted that 98 percent fell into one or more of the following categories: they had withdrawn their applications, they hailed from outside California, they had applied to highly selective engineering majors, or they had below-average GPAs for Berkeley admits.

And there were general explanations reviewing the recent series of changes in UC admissions policies, such as de-emphasis on the SAT and adoption of a comprehensive review system that evaluates each student in the context of their home and school environment--considering whether students have special talent in music or sports, speak English as a second language, or are the first generation in their family to attend college.

But university leaders say the attacks could not have come at a worse time, or from a worse source--the regents' chairman. The public broadsides over admissions could distract the university from its top agenda: maintaining funding and ensuring access. Already the legislature has declared that it won't fund any growth in enrollment, despite the increasing number of high-school graduates expected next year. UC has had to turn away nearly 2,000 students for the winter and spring terms, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed to cut $33 million more from the current year's budget, and an initial bite of $90 million for next year--which would completely gut the university's K-12 outreach programs.

"With the crisis we have going on, I'm appalled Moores is making an issue of this," Regent Odessa Johnson told a group of faculty who met last month to strategize about how to fulfill UC's outreach mission.

"All the issues are important," said former associate president Patrick Hayashi. "It's disheartening that it's being raised in such a nasty way."

And in a private letter that was leaked to the press, Moores' assault on Berkeley admissions drew unusually strong fire from the mild-mannered Berdahl. "The public release of a flawed report ... has been damaging to students who are already enrolled in Berkeley and are doing well here," he wrote. "You have attacked the small percentage of high-achieving freshman (5 percent) who have overcome substantial economic, social and educational disadvantages to come to Berkeley. They deserve more than derision from the Chair of the Board of Regents."

At the regents meeting, Moores said he does care about students' feelings, "especially the 3,200 kids who thought they'd done everything they need to be admitted to the University of California (at Berkeley) and found out they hadn't."

When several regents asked UC's attorney to look into Moores' use of the university seal and the UC name for copyright purposes, Moores called the criticisms "silly."

In the absence of affirmative action, comprehensive review has been favored by Black and Latino advocates because it eschews strict emphasis on grades and test scores, which tended to put minority students at a disadvantage. But conservatives also seemed comfortable with the idea of each student being evaluated as an individual. Dynes has declared his intention to protect comprehensive review, which was adopted about five years ago at Berkeley for part of the class and came into use a year ago for the entire UC system.

The process, ironically, is the very approach that was sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Grutter v. Bollinger decision last June. Though Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that universities are allowed to consider race as part of a comprehensive review, UC stands alone as the only public restitution in the nation to have voluntarily abandoned race as a factor--back in 1995 when the regents, led by Ward Connerly, voted to end the practice.