Badmissions
UC System Facing Yet Another Lawsuit
If children are the future, then the University of California system is well on its way to creating a dystopian nightmare by consistently discriminating against candidates for admission based on their race.
Despite the very specific ban on racial discrimination- a ban voters put in the state’s constitution through Proposition 209 almost 30 years ago – the “smarter better people of the UC system have decided the law is meaningless and is allegedly continuing its woke groupthink to control the university acceptance system.
And that’s why the group Students Against Racial Discrimination (SARD) has filed suit against the University of California system to try to find out.
The UC system does just what it wants, it created special “tracks” for certain people, it based admission– amazingly – on skin color.
But the UC system schools - not just undergrad but grad schools like being a doctor or s lawyer – do not care about the law. In fact, the system looks for any possible way to get around the law.
The suit, filed in United States District Court (eastern district here California) asks, among other things, that the court:
“(D)eclare that each of the defendants is violating Title VI by dis- criminating in favor of non-Asian racial minorities in student admissions” and “permanently enjoin the defendants from considering race in student admissions” and it “appoint a court monitor to oversee all decisions relating to the
defendants’ admission of students to ensure that these decisions are free from racial discrimination of any sort.”
As for money, which most lawsuits demand- the only request is for court and legal fees.
The SARD suit piggy-backs on but goes beyond the more well-known issues of Asian-American admissions/denials issue, such as those that occurred at Harvard University. The United Sates Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that Harvard’s “race-conscious admissions program” violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
SARD states:
“The University of California system discriminates on account of race when admitting students by giving discriminatory preferences to non-Asian racial minorities. This practice allows applicants with inferior academic credentials to obtain admission at the expense of rejected candidates with better academic credentials. This discriminates against large numbers of Asian- American and white applicants, who are denied admission to UC schools based on their race. And it also harms Hispanic and black students who are often placed at a significant academic disadvantage, and thus experience worse outcomes, because of the university’s use of racial preferences. Stu-
dents of all races are harmed by the University of California’s discriminatory behavior.”
The issue is not just at the undergraduate level but at the graduate level as well. The current suit includes each of the UC law schools.
It is also quite possible that an additional and/or sperate suit will tackle the same problem at UC’s med school.
Over the past year or so, UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine has become notorious for its aggressive DEI programs and standards and classes, the slithering taint of antisemitism, and the actions of one of its admissions leaders, Dr. Jennifer Lucero.
In 2021, a Black candidate for admission was being reviewed and, due to the person’s tests scores and such, it did not appear the candidate was up to snuff (btw, Geffen is/was one of the most difficult med schools to get into with an acceptance rate below 2%.)
Lucero did not seem to care:
When an admissions officer voiced concern about the candidate, the two people said, the dean of admissions (Lucero) exploded in anger.
"Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?" Lucero asked the admissions officer, these people said. The candidate's scores shouldn't matter, she continued, because "we need people like this in the medical school."
This is not simply an esoteric ideological question – the quality of students at Geffen has fallen dramatically in recent years, meaning many will simply not be terribly good doctors.
Internal test scores have plummeted, though this may be in part to a relatively new medical education concept that focuses on things other than medicine:
"UCLA still produces some very good graduates," one professor said. "But a third to a half of the medical school is incredibly unqualified."
The collapse in qualifications has been compounded by UCLA's decision, in 2020, to condense its preclinical curriculum from two years to one in order to add more time for research and community service. That means students arrive at their clinical rotations with just a year of courses under their belt—some of which focus less on science than social justice.
This approach seems to go hand-in-hand with the school’s recent problems with antisemitism and absurd DEI efforts. For example, first year med students have taken courses like:
History and Legacies of Immigration and Imperialism
Anti-Settler Colonialism/Indigenous Health
Disability Justice at the Intersections: Carceral Ableism, Medicine, and Racial Capitalism
In lieu, of course, of spending that time in class to figure out the difference between a foot and a hand. In fact, in one such class last year the school’s paid “activist in residence”
Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia called on the medical students to pray to “mama earth,” called medicine “white science,” and led students in ‘Free Palestine” chants. By the way, Gray-Garcia is a “formerly unhoused, incarcerated poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher, single mama of Tiburcio, daughter of a houseless, disabled, indigenous mama Dee.” And, fun fact, she’s white, though she tends to wear masks a lot. Wonder why.
To be blunt, it as if UCLA’s DEI- obsessed admissions offices were running a 1950’s suburban country club – No Jews Allowed.
Richard Sander is a law and economics professor at UCLA and is working with SARD to address the issue.
Sander said that in the wake of Prop 209, many schools seemed to at least to be trying to comply with the law but the equity imperative weaseled its way back into the system, quickly and, most importantly, quietly.
For example, the UCLA law school created a number of special admissions “tracks” to ease credential requirements for certain students. In 2002, Sander said, a special track was created for studying “critical race theory” and every student accepted through that track was black (other ethnicities did apply.)
There is also a “public interest” track and a “native American” track.
Each of these tracks – which can take an applicant outside of the normal process – have an “ideological or racial focus or both,” Sanders said.
In other words, when you can meet an applicant in person you can just see what race they actually are, obviating the need for any problematic paper trail.
At Geffen, a semi-similar program called “iDiverse” existed and/or still exists. While the web page containing the specifics about the program were deleted shortly after the general public noticed it existed, the Washington Free Beacon said this: https://freebeacon.com/campus/the-dean-of-ucla-medical-school-says-it-does-not-discriminate-based-on-race-his-own-research-center-runs-a-minorities-only-fellowship/
The allegations triggered an email message from the dean of the medical school, Steven Dubinett, who denied the claims and said that students and faculty "are held to the highest standards of academic excellence." He subsequently told an obscure Los Angeles Times opinion columnist that the allegations, published in the Washington Free Beacon, are "fact-free."
Hiring and admissions decisions, he wrote in his message last week, are "based on merit," not race, "in a process consistent with state and federal law."
But Dubinett himself directs a center within the medical school, the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, that houses a race-based fellowship experts say is illegal.
Participants in the "iDIVERSE" program "must be" black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, LGBT, or a woman, according to screenshots of a now-deleted webpage obtained by the Free Beacon.
This program – which may or may not still exist – just because it’s off the website does not mean it’s gone - highlights how race is not just at the center of the admissions process but goes well beyond.
As to grad schools in general, Sander said that – in part due to level of personal interviewing done by the faculty beyond the standard admissions process – “additional discretionary information” can be obtained regarding each student.
This is similar to the process of “supplemental review” of undergrad applicants which involves, again, moving certain students into essentially a difference process, a process that can be more easily hidden from the public and anyone in Sacramento that might be interested in figuring out if the UC system was following Prop 209.
It is in this grey area that much of the discrimination can take place with it being outside of the direct purview of the technical – and reportable - admissions process, Sander said.
Beyond the damage to the schools and, eventually, the public that race games can cause, Sander said they hurt the students as well.
Sander co-wrote a book called “Mismatch” in 2012 that posited that such programs set kids up for failure. He emphasized that that race is not the issue in the concept – think idiot kids of big donors - but that students that are ill-prepared for the academic rigors of top-flight schools end up failing out and/or being psychologically damaged by the experience.
“The issue isn’t race – the issue is the gap between them and their fellow students,” Sander said.
(That being said, the rich kids/legacy admissions will do just fine…as long as they don’t push on to grad school.)
The UC system responded to multiple related questions posed with the following statement:
“The University of California has not been served with the filings (AUTHORS NOTE – it was filed weeks ago). 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.”
As for Geffen itself, it did not respond to the following questions:
-Is Jennifer Lucero still involved in the admissions process?
-Was she disciplined in any way as her statements seem to be in direct contradiction to California law?
-Does the Geffen school have a race-based admissions protocol?
-To your knowledge, is the Geffen admissions process similar to other UC med schools?
-Does the change in DC - including the banning of "dei" programs - impact the school and if so how?
While they would not answer these questions now, it is possible they will have to, soon, in court.
Because reverse discrimination does not exist – it’s just discrimination.
Note - more to come and if you have any info regarding the scandal please email at planbuckley@gmail.com .