Admitting It's Failure
UC System Still Using Race to Discrimnate, Won't Admit It
Thanks to the Orange County Register for running this piece.
Stanley Smith gets into college,
Stanley Zhong does not.
Despite a stellar high school record, near-perfect SATs, and running a software company he founded while still a high school sophomore, Stanley Zhong was rejected by admissions officers at UC Berkeley, UCLA, Davis, San Diego and Santa Barbara – every University of California campus he applied to.
Just 18 at the time, Zhong shook off the disappointment and immediately earned a prestigious job as a Google programmer. Now 25, he hasn’t given up on his dream: he’d still like to go back to school and eventually earn a doctorate. To clear the path, he’s suing the University of California system because, he says, race factored into his UC rejections seven years ago.
Citing violations of the Fourteenth Amendment, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the California constitution – it became specifically illegal, including government agencies like the universities, to discriminate on the basis of race after the passage of Proposition 209 nearly 30 years ago - Zhong’s federal suit claims the UC system intentionally discriminates against Asian-American students in order to achieve racial quotas in undergraduate and graduate admissions.
The suit was filed in California’s Eastern District of the United States District court and details a litany of allegations all pointing to the UC system intentionally discriminating against Asian-American students, setting various racial metrics and barriers, and failing to abide by state and federal law in doing so.
The suit echoes across the nation that in that kids it will involve kids od evert ethnicity..
And while asserting financial loss and emotional distress and reputational damage, he’s not even asking for money (beyond costs) in the suit – in fact, it is filed “pro se” (or on their own behalf because they could not find a Californian to take their case) and, again, they are just asking that the UC’s start following the law.
“We want to open up the whole secret box of what they are doing,” said Nan Zhong, Stanley’s father and president of the group Students Who Oppose Racial Discrimination (SWORD) that filed the suit (and just last week a similar action in the state of Washington.) “They know exactly what they are doing.”
What’s in the black box? The suit alleges that n faced admission “challenges” that simply didn’t exist for other applicants. And it even hid its racial preference system under the idea of “holistic. For example, the suit alleges: that:
“(A) "test-blind" admissions policy. However, this position is inherently contradictory. S review cannot be truly holistic if it deliberately excludes object measures like standardized tests, especially for STEM applicants where such metrics are crucial for assessing academic preparedness.
Continuing the allegations of admission preferential/guilt that is the UC system, the suit notes that:
According to the UC Regents' Bylaws, the Academic Senate holds the authority to
"set the conditions of admissions." In 2020, the UC Academic Senate overwhelmingly voted 51-0, with one abstention, to retain standardized tests such as the SAT (See Exhibit 44}. Despite this overwhelming endorsement amid growing applicant pools and widespread grade
inflation, the UC Board of Regents, composed primarily of political is appointees, overruled the recommendation raising significant concerns about their underlying motivations. Although UC
claimed in 2020 that it would develop a "new test," no such test was ever created, resulting in the complete elimination of standardized testing from the admissions process.
he UC response? We didn’t do anything wrong because doing so would be illegal, an astonishing piece of tautological legalese that is the equivalent of a murder suspect offering as his only defense “I didn’t do it because murder is illegal.”
Workarounds and discretionary processes have been put in place throughout the entire admissions system – both undergraduate and for graduate programs like law and medical school - system, creating a Potemkin Village version of race-neutrality to hide actual results.
While the state has a reputation for being a bit – well more than a bit – left of center, every challenge to Prop 209 – in the courts and at the ballot box – has failed decisively.
In other words, Californians are adamantly against racial discrimination of any kind, a stance that should not be terribly controversial.
In addition to discriminating against Asian-American students, SWORD alleges that the UC system has intimidated current Asian-American students from assisting in its lawsuit.
Proof point referenced in the suit? Beyond the numerous studies looking at the radical change in admissions over the past decade, there is this overt admission from the dean of Berkeley’s law school, fashionable career leftist Erwin Chemerinsky:
"What colleges and universities will need to do after affirmative action is eliminated is finding ways to achieve diversity that can't be documented as violating the Constitution. So they can't have any explicit use of race. They have to make sure that their admissions statistics don't reveal any use of race. But they can use proxies for race."
The UC system responded to multiple related questions posed with the following statement:
“The University of California has not been served with the filing (AUTHORS NOTE – the suit was filed weeks ago so the likelihood of that being exactly true is questionable.) If served, we will vigorously defend our admission practices. We believe these to be meritless suits that seek to distract us from our mission to provide California students with a world class education.
Since the consideration of race in admissions was banned in California in 1996, the University of California has adjusted its admissions practices to comply with the law. We stand by our admission policies and our record of expanding access for all qualified students. The UC undergraduate admissions application collects students’ race and ethnicity for statistical purposes only. This information is not shared with application reviewers and is not used for admission.”
Again – we didn’t do it because we were not allowed to do it, a defense that manages to combine hypocrisy, untruthfulness, and tautological confusion rendering it meaningless.
As to the concept of using “proxies for race,” there appears to be a number of ways that can be accomplished while very doubtfully keeping to the letter off the law but undoubtedly violating the spirit off the law.
For example, if a school – which includes nearly the entirety of the UC and the California State University systems – call themselves a “minority serving institution,” they may be able to justify race-based admissions quotas and they are definitely – or were, the current status is unclear with the new administration – receive additional federal funding for saying they are, a clear incentive to engage in a discriminatory admissions practice.
Stanley declined to personally comment for this story because, Nan said, “(D)ue to the open hostility against Asian-American students standing up for their rights in college admissions, Stanley is not taking media interviews in connection with the lawsuits.”
He added “Sorry about that.”
As we all are.