Quick Hits

Today, the United States Supreme Court, in a divided opinion, upheld as CONSTITUTIONAL a provision of the Michigan Constitution that is very similar to Proposition 209.  (New York Times story on the decision)  Notably, Michigan's Proposal 2 was a reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in 2003 upholding the University of Michigan Law School's use of race as a factor in admissions. 

But we also have some other interesting developments in California. 

First, according to data released by the University of California, Latinos has passed whites as the second largest group of admitted students this year.  (OC Register story)  Here's the link to the UC's Summary Fact Sheet and here's the link to Table 3, which gives the campus-by-campus and universitywide diversity break-down.  Again, these are ADMISSIONS numbers for Fall 2014, not applications and not actual enrollment.  I prefer looking at the Universitywide numbers because they are not duplicated numbers (more than one campus can offer a particular student admission) and they reflect the overall systemwide effort to create a diversity across the entire system.

For Asian Americans, in 2012 the percentage was 36.3%, in 2013 it was 36.0% and in 2014 it is 36.2%.  No change.  There was also no change in all the other groups EXCEPT whites (from 28.2% in 2012 to 28.1% in 2013 to 26.8% in 2014) and Hispanic/Latino (from 27.3% in 2012 to 27.6% in 2013 to 28.8% in 2014). 

The other interesting news is that the percentage of non-resident students admitted (international and out-of-state), as a percentage of the admitted class, ROSE.  UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said, in a written statement, that non-resident students pay more in tuition and that additional revenue is necessary to maintain the programs at UC Berkeley.  Moreover, the plan, Chancellor Dirks explained, was to increase the total percentage of non-resident students from 20 percent to 23 percent in the next three years.  So, one could say, that the bigger threat to Asian American students comes not from SCA-5 (which is currently dead) but from the UC System's need to enroll non-resident students for economic reasons.  That is a greater threat to California's Master Plan to educate Californians. 

Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin: A Word from our Friends

Amicus curiae briefs - aka "friend of the court" briefs - are always an interesting read.  Here are two that are significant for the SCA-5 issue:

Here's the brief filed by the University of California.  And below are some excerpts that may be of interest:

Page 4:

California has adopted a number of different strategies in an attempt to reverse that decline in underrepresented minority students, including expanding its outreach program to secondary schools, incorporating a broader program and more comprehensive set of admissions criteria, adopting 'holistic' review of applicants, decreasing the weight given to standardized tests, and admitting a specified percentage of the top graduates from each high school under an 'Eligibility in the Local Context' program similar in certain respects to UT's 'Top Ten Percent' Program.  To date, however, those measures have enjoyed only limited success.  They have not enabled the University of California fully to reverse the precipitous decline in minority admissions and enrollment that followed the enactment of Proposition 209, nor to keep pace with the growing population of underrepresented minorities in the applicant pool of qualified high school graduates.  These effects have been most severe and most difficult to reverse at the University's most highly-ranked and competitive campuses. 

The University of California's experience establishes that in California, and likely elsewhere, at present the compelling government interest in student body diversity cannot be fully realized at selective institutions without taking race into account in undergraduate admissions decisions.

Pages 10 to 12 (discussing campus racial climate):

UC campuses, like UT, administer a biennial survey to undergraduates in which they are asked, among other things, whether they feel students of their race/ethnicity are respected on campus.  ... In many cases, students' responses to the question correlate directly with whether the representation of underrepresented minority students on campus approaches critical mass.  ...  In short, where critical mass is not achieved, the campus racial climate is likely to be significantly less hospitable to minorities.  ...  The concern about a welcoming climate for all racial and ethnic groups on campus is part of a broader commitment by UC and other public institutions to serve the full range of their citizenry, from all cultural, racial, ethnic, geographic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

[And incidents like the UCI fraternity video depicting blackface!]

Page 15 to 16 (discussing UC admissions standards)

The Master Plan for Higher education of the State of California provides that the University of California should educate freshmen from the 'top one-eight' (12.5 per cent) of all graduates of California public high schools.  To identify these students, the University of California promulgates minimum eligibility requirements that both specify a floor of preparation needed to pursue study at UC and also function as an entitlement: any high school graduate who meets these requirements is guaranteed a place at UC - although not necessarily at the campus nor in the major of his or her choice.  At the same time, because demand for admission exceeds enrollment capacity at most UC campuses, the campuses over the years have developed selection criteria (such as consideration of high school grade point average, test scores, and other evidence of academic promise) to choose which UC-eligible applicants they will admit.  These criteria function as a second, and generally more demanding, set of requirements that applicants to most of the campuses must meet.

 Pages 20 to 22 (discussing the Outreach Task Force strategy as a response to Prop 209)

[Board of Regents] directed the formation of a task force on academic outreach, the goal of which was to develop proposals for new directions and increased funding to increase the eligibility rate of economically disadvantaged and other applicants.  ... Consistent with Proposition 209, UC's outreach programs operate in a race-neutral fashion.  To be eligible for these programs, applicants must be from low-income families or those with little or no previous experience with higher education, or attend a school that is educationally disadvantaged.

[Footnote 32]  As the minority enrollment figures discussed below make clear, policies that increased the enrollment of low-income students do not serve as an effective 'proxy' for race and ethnicity.

Pages 23 to 24 (discussing the ELC program which was a response to Prop 209)

... effective for students entering the University in 2001, the Board of Regents modified its existing eligibility policy to add a 'top 4 percent' program, under which the top 4 percent of the eligible students in each California public high school were designated as Eligible in the Local Context ('ELC').  Effective for students entering UC as freshmen for fall 2012, the Board of Regents expanded the ELC program to the top 9 percent of eligible California high school graduates.   ... The ELC program has been successful in increasing interest and applications from students at high schools that traditionally sent few students to the University.  However, because the State of California has few if any high schools with student bodies composed entirely of minorities, it has not substantially increased the diversity of the pool of students considered eligible for UC.

Pages 25 to 28 discuss the use of a "holistic review" in selecting students and pages 28 to 29 discuss the reduced emphasis on standardized test scores.

Page  29 sums up the results of these new tools:

While these and other measures have enjoyed some limited success, particularly at UC's less selective campuses, the unfortunate reality is that the University's experience continues to support the conclusion it reached a number of years ago: 'in a highly selective institution, implementing race-neutral policies leads to a substantial decline in the proportion of entering students who are African American, American Indian, and Latino.'

Page 32 (after running through the numbers for African-American and Latino students):

These figures are troubling, because they call into serious question whether it is currently feasible without the careful and limited application of race-conscious measures to achieve the level of diversity of underrepresented minority students that this Court has recognized as a legitimate objective in the context of higher education.

Page 33 to 34 (discussing under-representation in graduate programs):

In particular, business schools, which play an influential role in shaping tomorrow's business leaders, have very low proportions of underrepresented minorities, and UC's business schools compare poorly in that respect to similar programs nationally.  Systemwide, UC enrolled fewer minority students in business (4.5 percent) than did comparable programs nationally (12.8 percent).  In California, where an estimated 46.4 percent of the 2011 population is Latino/Hispanic, African American and American Indian, recent entering classes of MBA students at UC campuses have averaged only one to two percent African American and three to four percent Latino students.  Indeed, during ten of the last eleven academic years, two or more of UC's six business schools enrolled zero African Americans.  ... Entering law school classes in recent years have averaged only three to four percent African American, with one UC law school in 2009-2010 reporting only ten African American students in a student body of over 600, considerably below the numbers in the years immediately before Proposition 209.

Here's the brief filed by 80-20 and some other organizations opposing affirmative action.

SCA-5 Is Alive???

Just to recap:  On March 17th, Assembly Speaker John Perez, at the behest of Senator Ed Hernandez (the driving force behind SCA-1), pulled the plug on SCA-5.  On March 26, State Senator Leland Yee was arrested by the FBI on corruption charges.  With the Democratic super majority in trouble due to two State Senators in hot water, Senator Yee was surely the nail in the proverbial coffin.  As discussed in my earlier posts about the mechanics of all this, SCA-5 requires a two-thirds vote of both houses to get onto the ballot as a proposition.  Without a super majority in both chambers, Democrats have no chance of bringing back SCA-5 any time soon.

So that means SCA-5 is dead right?  As it turns out, SCA-5 may be dead as a bill, but it is ALIVE as an issue.

The California Latino Legislative Caucus and California Legislative Black Caucus, in a statement issued March 25th, blasted the Democratic leadership and Republicans:

We understand the desire of leadership to have further discussions about this important issue and are committed to ensuring the success of the bicameral commission on issues surrounding recruitment, admissions, and retention. However, we must not ignore the fact that the major reason this measure has been delayed is due to a malicious disinformation campaign being waged by disingenuous ultra-conservative partisans intent on denying equal opportunity for all Californians.

And they started slamming fellow Democrats who had betrayed the cause.

That same day, six state legislators (Senators Ricardo Lara (Bell Gardens), Norma Torres (Pomona), and Holly Mitchell (Hollywood) and Assembly members Lorena Gonzalez (San Deigo), Anthony Rendon (Lakewood) and Jose Medina (Riverside)) withdrew their endorsement of State Senator Ted Lieu (who had joined Leland Yee and Carol Liu in asking for Senator Hernandez to slow down SCA-5) for Congress. 

Today, members of the Latino and Black caucuses withheld necessary votes in a bill sponsored by State Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi that would have expanded the number of vehicles entitled to use HOV / carpool lanes.

Sen. Holly Mitchell, the Los Angeles Democrat who chairs the Legislature's black caucus, said she was not surprised to hear that so many lawmakers withheld their votes on Muratsuchi's bill. Does she expect black and Latino Democrats to continue withholding votes from colleagues they feel do not support a return to affirmative action?

"Perhaps," Mitchell said, adding that lawmakers who believe in restoring affirmative action are concerned "that there is a lack of commitment to a core Democratic party priority."

With Democrats attacking each other, is it a surprise that Republicans using SCA-5 as a wedge issue to divide the Asian-American community?

[At the state Republic Convention] California Republican Party vice chairwoman Harmeet Dhillon told reporters Saturday that her party’s candidates have been seizing on disaffected Asian voters across the state.

“It is just math that affirmative action suppresses Asian-Americans and Jewish Americans,” Dhillon said. “So that is going to turn out those Asian voters who live in California because their dream is to send their kids to UC Berkeley or UCLA or one of those top schools.”

(See article)

Republican candidate Peter Kuo, on his campaign website, is keeping the issue alive by telling voters that SCA-5 will return after the November election.  Also, as long as Democrats keep talking about it, Republicans like Kuo get to keep on talking about it too (responding to Black & Latino causus' joint statement). 

So, to recap, SCA-5 was brought to life, killed off, and brought back to life again.

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/04/in-sign-of-backlash-democrats-help-stall-al-muratsuchi-bill.html#storylink=cpy

It's Over .... For Now

According to NPR, SCA-5 is dead.  According to the Assembly leadership, there aren't the votes to pass it - when you consider the fact that the Democrats hold a super majority, that means there's a break in the ranks somewhere.  Senator Hernandez says he's interested in bringing it back in 2016 ... But if the Democrats lose their supermajorities in either chamber, that won't be a possibility.  (NPR story)

I guess my work here is done but in the next couple of weeks, I'll put up the rest of my research in case anyone wants more info on this.

More Number Crunching ...

I've again dived into the numbers from the UC Application, Admission & Enrollment, California Resident Freshman data.  This time, I've taken a look at the Enrollment data both (1) as a percentage for each racial group for the total enrolled class and (2) as a percentage of the students for each racial group who accepted the admissions offer. 

The first of these new charts shows that there is a greater percentage of Asians who Enroll than who were offered Admissions.  It appears, according to the second new chart, that the reason for this is that Asians consistently accepted the offer and enrolled at a substantially greater rate than the other groups examined.  I added East Indian / Pakastani, Filipino American, and Native American, to see if the other Asian groups had similarly high numbers and I wanted to see if Native Americans were having better, worse, or similar numbers to the other disadvantaged communities. 

Also surprising was that starting around 2002, every group, except for the Asians, had multiple years when less than half of those who got offers actually enrolled.  This represents a significant decline from the prior decade.  My guess (I'm just speculating here) as to why this happened / is happening is the steady increase in tuition since 2002. 

SCA-5 Will Not Impact Asian Americans: An Analysis of UC Admissions Data From 1989 to 2013

In my "Numbers, numbers, and more numbers" post, I provided a link to the UC Admissions and Enrollment Data from 1989 to 2013.  I finally had some time to take a closer look. 

METHODOLOGY:
The University of California provided racial breakdowns for three areas: Applications, Admissions, and Enrollment.  I decided not to look at Applications, but anybody can apply.  It's just like anyone can sue, but it doesn't mean that the lawsuit has any merit.  I also decided not to look at Enrollments; there are all kinds of reasons why people choose not to enroll, including financial reasons or they chose to go to a different school (yes, shockingly, a UC is not always the first choice).  But if you're trying to determine if Proposition 209 affected the decision-making process of admissions officers, wouldn't you want to look at Admissions data?

Rather than look at every campus (I don't have THAT much time), I looked at the Universitywide figures.  When I did, I noticed that the total Universitywide admissions number rose from 31,764 in 1989 to 62,683.  So comparing the number of students in each racial group from year to year wouldn't work.  Instead, I chose to look at the percentages for each racial group for each year.  There were a couple of groups I didn't include at all because their numbers were on the smaller side (I'm using UC's abbreviations): Am Indian; E Ind/Pak; Filipino Am; Other.  Lastly, I combined the categories of Chicano and Latino.

FINDINGS:

Here's the chart I came up with:

Although Proposition 209 passed in 1996, the law did become effective until 1998.  Keeping that in mind, the two most unusual numbers from 1998 is the HUGE jump in category of "unknown" and the drop in "white."  "Unknown" eventually returned to it's pre-209 levels, but it took over a decade for that to happen.  As for whites, the 35.6% was an anomaly, but perhaps a sign of things to come as white admissions numbers have continued to decline year after year from 1989.  The passage of Prop 209 has done nothing to stop that.  African Americans have held steady.  Asian Americans have had a slight uptick.  But the only group that has increased year after year is Chicano/Latino, arguably at the expense of Whites.

So there's plenty of ammo that both sides can use in the Affirmative Action debate. 

Bottom line: if the adoption of Proposition 209 didn't change offers of Admission to Asian Americans, it is unlikely that the repeal of Proposition of 209 via SCA-5 will have a substantial change on Admissions to Asian Americans.

And in case you want to know what the current admissions criteria are for the University of California, click here.

I've Got Beef with 80-20's "Powerful Fax"

80-20 posted a fax that was sent by Dr. Huang to members of the State Assembly.  The tout it as a "Powerful Fax" when in fact, it's just a cheap shot.   

Here's the text of the fax. 

"Dear AsAm Legislators in the California Assembly,

Please vote NO to SCA5 in the Assembly.

The senate passing of SCA5 with the support of all three AsAm senators
had sent shock waves through the AsAm community across the nation,
turning ordinary citizens into an army of political activists. . . .

Do NOT underestimate the resolve of ordinary people. The day of
reckoning will come this November. As a California resident, I will join in
hand with millions across the nation, and with the AsAm voters in your
districts, to make sure the AsAm politicians are accountable to their
constituents. The days, when AsAm politicians can take the money and
the votes from their community, and then do whatever that suit their
personal ambitions, are over. We will see to it that such politicians be
defeated in the next election cycle.

If the Democratic Party leadership doesn't bent on pushing forward SCA5,
they will lose their Super Majority in the California legislature. The
recent mayoral election in the City of San Diego will serve as a warning: a
Republican candidate prevailed in an overwhelmingly Democrat city.

SCA5 is a "Yellow Peril Act", a 21st century version of the "Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882", aimed specifically to impose a quota-like ceiling on
the AsAm students. . . . Therefore, there can be no illusion, no matter
how SCA5 is sugar-coated, that it is a bill aimed squarely to limit the AsAm
enrollment through a reverse "racial preference" treatment, under an
argument that "the college enrollment should reflect the population".
Fortunately, such a "proportional representation" argument has been
consistently rejected by the US Supreme Court in all precedent cases to be
in violation of the "Equal Protection Clause" of the 14th Amendment of the
United States Constitution. . . . .

SCA5 cannot hide under the disguise of "equal opportunity". In fact it is
the antithesis of "equal opportunity" because it demands "equal outcomes"
despite of "unequal qualifications and efforts". It is Communism in
essence because all resources are to be divided equally, depriving the
citizenry of any incentive to excel, dragging down the US competitiveness
in the long run. . . . . Rewarding or penalize an individual based on
his/her skin color is morally repugnant. . . . With your help, we shall
overcome.

Thank you for your attention.

Dr. Haibo Huang
A deeply concerned California resident.

As I've discussed in my post spotlighting 80-20, 80-20 does have the resources to mobilize against individual Assembly members, so Dr. Haibo Huang, who serves on the Board of Directors, is not making an empty threat.

But here's why I take issue with Dr. Huang's letter and why it's anything but a "Powerful Fax" - when your organization files amicus briefs in the Supreme Court and you yourself are conducting investigations "for 80-20 regarding the impact of race-conscious college admissions on Asian American applicants" (see 80-20's bio of Dr. Huang), you don't get a pass for making misleading and inflammatory arguments. 

If 80-20 claims that it stands for Asian Americans and wants to be taken seriously, then 80-20 has a responsibility to make respectable arguments. 

Let's be clear: SCA-5 is a measure designed to insert affirmative action back into higher education.  Dr. Huang knows exactly what that entails.  But rather than even using the term "race-conscious," Dr. Huang knowingly and deliberately chooses to compare SCA-5 to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and "quota-like ceiling."  The Chinese Exclusion Act was an explicit, race-specific ban on Chinese immigrants which is clearly illegal and the United States Supreme Court has consistently held that the use of quotas in higher education are not legal.  80-20 and Dr. Huang also know that the issue is not "proportional representation" or college enrollment "reflecting the population." 

Let's have a debate about whether affirmative action has a place in California's public universities without having to resort to invoking the specter of Communism.  I think the Asian American community deserves that much.