A professor at the University of California-Los Angeles roused a contentious affirmative action debate when he accused UCLA of violating California's laws against using race and ethnicity as a factor in college admissions processes.
In August, political science professor Timothy Groseclose resigned from the UCLA Council on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools after months of failed attempts to obtain student applications that could show that the school violated a 1996 amendment to the California state constitution banning affirmative action in public universities.
Groseclose released an 89 page report on the day of his resignation that included transcripts from closed-door meetings, public emails, letters of support and other evidence supporting his claim that UCLA had attempted to increase minority presence on campus through affirmative action, according to a Los Angeles Times article.
In 2006, the Los Angeles Times revealed that only 2 percent of UCLA's admitted freshmen class was black. To legally increase diversity, UCLA used a holistic admissions approach, which allowed an admissions officer to evaluate a full application, rather than two officers evaluating the academic and outside achievements separately. The holistic approach better factors in details such as socioeconomic status, life hurdles and extracurricular activities, along with traditional test scores, according to UCLA officials.
Groseclose's report states that the holistic approach makes it too easy for a student to reveal race in a college application, especially in essays. Groseclose also condemned UCLA's admissions office for hiring primarily minority application readers as an attempt to tilt a bias towards minorities.
Ward Connerly, a former UCLA admissions official and chief architect of Proposition 209 -- the 1996 amendment -- and President of the American Civil Rights Institute, said that while holistic review is legal, universities should use it with integrity.
"The purpose of holistic review is not to provide some Trojan horse to circumvent the law," he said."There are so many ways to telegraph your race in a holistic process, so the fact that UCLA won't reveal data to professor Groseclose speaks volumes of how they will not be able to defend their conduct."
Pro-affirmative action organization Any Means Necessary spokeswoman Donna Stern said she thinks Groseclose and Connerly have no case against the university.
"Ward Connerly will use any excuse to cry foul," she said. "He and professor Groseclose are using inverse logic and creating a problem where there wasn't one."
Stern said that the increase in minority students is due to the holistic review, but in an entirely legal way.
"Test scores have a proven racial bias and now readers can look beyond one number," Stern said. "The tests are the sentinel at the doorstep to keep minority students out.
"Why should black and Latino students go against higher scrutiny than their peers?" Stern said, "The UCLA island of white students in the middle of a diverse city is unconscionable . . . and is finally changing. It looks like some people just cannot handle it."
Center for Equal Opportunity President Roger Clegg said Groseclose should be applauded, not criticized for objecting to the UCLA discrimination and federal action should be taken against universities that use affirmative action.
"Hopefully at some point federal law will be interpreted in such a way to limit preferences in all schools, not just public," Clegg said. "All universities, including private schools, should make public whether or not they use affirmative action, and how much they weigh it."
In a statement released by UCLA the day after Groseclose's resignation, the school said it will not release students' admission records because it respects student privacy and Groseclose's unwillingness to pass his study to an independent nonpartisan researcher was not the fault of UCLA.
"It is disappointing that professor Groseclose has decided not to work with staff to arrive at a solution," a statement released by the UCLA Office of Media Relations said. "The admissions process has many safeguards to ensure fairness to all applicants and compliance with state law."
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