California Watch

Former University of California regent and affirmative action foe Ward Connerly is jumping into the fray at UC San Diego, where the chancellor has vowed to increase black student enrollment in the midst of several racially charged incidents at that campus. 

Ward Connerly

City News Service reports that Connerly wants to review an agreement recently formed between UCSD and its Black Student Union to see if it violates the state constitution. Connerly helped win passage of Proposition 209, the California measure that banned the consideration of race, sex and ethnicity in campus admissions in 1996.

Senior UCSD administrators, faculty and students, led by Black Student Union co-chairs David Ritcherson and Fnann Keflezighi, came to an agreement last week. Under the plan, the university will try to improve the campus climate by increasing diversity on the campus, in the curriculum and throughout the community, according to a statement released by the university.

The meeting was a reaction to increased racial tensions on campus in recent months. It began with a student-organized party that mocked black culture. Then students used a racial slur on a closed-circuit campus television broadcast that made fun of the furor over the party.

More recently, a student left a noose hanging in the campus library. She later confessed and apologized in an anonymous letter to the student newspaper, where she said she didn't think about the significance of the noose.

The university's press release on the agreement says officials will try to increase enrollment of black students by funding Black Student Union recruitment programs and boosting the number of black graduate student applicants.

In an interview with City News Service, Connerly questioned whether the recruitment effort would end there, however.

It is okay for Chancellor Marye Anne Fox to spend money for the BSU to seek more minority applicants, said Connerly, who is black.

'It doesn’t sound like she’s limiting herself to that,' said Connerly, who wants to get a copy of the agreement so his knowledge is not limited to media reports.

He said no matter how few blacks are enrolled at a university (UCSD is less than 2 percent black), admission standards have to be upheld.

“There just aren’t enough black kids who are academically prepared to go to UC San Diego,” Connerly said.

Connerly isn't the only high-profile outsider taking a look at the UCSD situation. "Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edley was named special advisor to UC President Mark Yudof and UCSD Chancellor Fox to help resolve" the acts of racism on the Southern California campus, the Berkeley Daily Planet reports.

Edley, considered a civil rights expert, will help implement the same plan that Connerly plans to review. The plan goes beyond efforts to admit more black students; it also includes goals of changing the student conduct code, establishing campus-wide diversity curricular requirements for undergraduates and more.