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How the Trump administration’s potential affirmative action crackdown could affect California’s colleges

Private universities in the Golden State could come under scrutiny.


An aerial view of the Stanford University campus in Stanford, Calif., features the Hoover Tower Wednesday afternoon, Sept. 2, 2015. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

By Emily DeRuy
August 2, 2017 at 4:33 pm

In a move apparently aimed at schools with admissions programs that give underrepresented minorities, like black and Latino students, a boost over other students with similar applications, the Trump administration is preparing to investigate and possibly sue universities that intentionally discriminate against white people.

Though California’s public universities already are barred from considering race in college admissions, experts say private colleges may find themselves under a new microscope.

Plans for the new Department of Justice focus were first outlined in an internal document to the department’s Civil Rights Division obtained by the New York Times, and addressed by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders at a briefing on Wednesday.

“While the White House does not confirm or deny the existence of potential investigations, the Department of Justice will always review credible allegations of discrimination on the basis of any race,” Huckabee Sanders said.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, called the reports inaccurate, saying the posting in the Civil Rights Division sought volunteers to investigate a 2015 complaint that alleged racial discrimination against Asians in a university’s admissions policy and practices.

“This Department of Justice has not received or issued any directive, memorandum, initiative, or policy related to university admissions in general,” Department of Justice Spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement.

In California, Proposition 209 — approved by voters in 1996 — already prohibits public schools from explicitly considering race when deciding which students to admit. So the University of California and the California State University systems would be unlikely to face serious repercussions from the U.S. Justice Department in any event, said Patricia Gándara, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.

Even so, UC President Janet Napolitano issued a statement saying it would be “tragic” if the system’s efforts to reach out to historically underrepresented students “somehow ran afoul of this reported misguided Justice Department initiative.”

Private universities, however, have more leeway to consider race. But since private schools still receive government funding, their policies could be more intensely scrutinized. Stanford University, for instance, reviews applications holistically and says it takes “family background, educational differences, employment and life experiences” into account. Stanford’s student undergraduate student population last fall was 36 percent white, 21 percent Asian, 16 percent Hispanic, and 6 percent black.

In the past, the school has argued for considering race and ethnicity in admissions. Stanford declined an interview request, saying in a statement only, “We could not speculate in advance of more detailed information, but Stanford complies with all anti-discrimination laws.”

Even if schools aren’t targeted directly, Gándara worries the news could have a chilling effect on the consideration of race in college admissions. “People don’t want to get involved in a major lawsuit,” she said.

But Elizabeth Hillman, president of Mills College in Oakland, doesn’t think the revelation will trigger immediate changes at admissions offices around the state because diversity is a central goal for schools.

“The idea that we wouldn’t continue to have diverse campuses,” she said, “I don’t see that as viable given the economy and politics of the world today.”

More than half of Mills’ undergraduate students last fall were students of color. Twenty-seven percent were Hispanic, 9 percent black, 9 percent Asian/Pacific Islander and 45 percent white.

Hillman is more worried about how students will perceive such news, which comes after the administration has vowed to crack down on transgender people serving in the military and on undocumented immigrants.

“To me it’s a big symbolic gesture of the federal government’s approach to civil rights,” she said. “The narrative of civil rights has been about progress and inclusion. This is a very different take on that.”

Gándara agreed. “I think it’s coming from a very political place,” she said. “We don’t think that colleges are discriminating against white students.”

While critics of affirmative action, among them Ward Connerly — a former member of the UC Board of Regents and one of the architects of Prop. 209 — say it discriminates against white and Asian students in California, Gándara, Hillman and others disagree.

After affirmative action was banned in California, the number of black and Latino students at the UCs dropped, particularly at the system’s most competitive schools, UCLA and UC Berkeley. The UCs now guarantee admission to students in the top 9 percent of their high school class. Because many of the state’s high schools are fairly segregated, the system produces some racial and socioeconomic diversity. But not enough, according to Gándara.

“It’s very clear that African-Americans, Latinos and Native Americans are not being given any particular leg up,” Gándara said. These students, she continued, are underrepresented at the state’s most selective colleges in part because they tend to go to high schools that aren’t as equipped to prepare them for college as schools in more affluent areas. “If you can’t allow (affirmative action),” she said, “it’s hard to break that cycle.”

She’s also concerned that if private universities rein in their consideration of race, students of color will have fewer opportunities.

For Hillman, the news is a sobering reminder. “I think progress in terms of equity is never secure,” she said. “There’s no linear path toward greater justice and equity.”

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/02/how-the-trump-administrations-affirmative-action-crackdown-could-affect-californias-colleges/