125 (Spring 2000): 57-58
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University Outreach and Affirmative Action
CORRIE MARTIN
CURRENT university-school partnerships point the way toward the most potentially transformative areas of programming in education today. They present opportunities for curriculum design and implementation and for exploring the meaning and functions of literacy and of the teaching of composition. They challenge the self-image of university teachers; the conventional relation of "higher" to "lower" education; and the relation of the university to society at large. These programs recognize that the quality and value of education at the college level depend on supporting the elementary and secondary levels and opening the university to the surrounding communities, communities that, even at public universities, are often not the source of the majority of the students. But as with other noble experiments, social and political contexts are crucial to understanding the ambivalences within the university-driven outreach movement, of which our program, Humanities Out There, is an instructive example. The current emphasis on outreach by university educators and administrators is a part of, and a response to, the backlash against affirmative action admissions policies and rhetoric. For the University of California, this context is obvious. The key developments in the past few years in California follow:
- On 1 June 1995, Governor Pete Wilson issued Executive Order 124-95 to "End Preferential Treatment and to Promote Individual Opportunity Based on Merit," requiring the UC system to comply immediately.
- On 20 July 1995, the UC Board of Regents approved Resolution SP-1, "Policy Ensuring Equal Treatment Admissions," stating that "the UC shall not use race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin as criteria for admission." The board also attempted to mitigate the implication that the university is hostile toward minorities, women, and immigrants by ending with an assertion of belief in the value of "diversity" and the capacity of individuals to achieve it for themselves: "Believing California's diversity to be an asset, we adopt this statement: Because individual members of all California's diverse races have the intelligence and capacity to succeed at the University of California, this policy will achieve a UC population that reflects this state's diversity through the preparation and empowerment of all students in this state to succeed rather than through a system of artificial preferences" (sec. 9).
- In November 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, which declares that "the state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin [. . .]." This proposition followed the passing of Proposition 187, whose restriction on state services for undocumented immigrants were eventually struck down by the courts.
- In spring 1998, entering undergraduates at most of the University of California campuses were admitted under new guidelines reflecting all the changes above.
Outreach here becomes the solution to or compensation for the whittling away of explicit affirmative action measures, while opening itself to being attacked as a suspect form of preferential treatment. The text of SP-1 advocates the extension of outreach programs to those "underrepresented" in the enrolled UC student population. To this end, the university created a task force to study the possibilities of extending outreach programs and in 1998 doubled its spending on various forms of outreach to more than $120 million.
Although the current emphasis on outreach stems directly from the backlash against affirmative action, it is also important to note that outreach services and programs are not new. The UC system established many outreach programs throughout the 1970s and 1980s that specifically acknowledged the "fundamental inequity" in the rate of the university's admissions and the eligibility of certain groups. These programs, which targeted minority groups, women in certain fields, students in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas of the state, and schools with historically low rates of college enrollment, aimed to help students become more enrollable by UC admissions standards. Thus affirmative action has historically meant educational programs that aim to make disadvantaged groups more acceptable under existing standards. It has also entailed an ongoing examination of the validity and fairness of those standards. Such outreach programs made up the bulk of "affirmative action" measures at the university well into the 1990s. UC Irvine's assistant to the vice chancellor of student affairs, Robin Harders, explains, "Although affirmative action has become negatively identified with preferences and speciously opposed to merit, at UC the term refers to a broad array of programs and policies affecting hiring, admissions, and contracting. In admissions, the number of newly enrolled freshmen accepted into the university in exception of some admissions requirements [. . .] never exceed[ed] 6% of total admits, and includ[ed] athletes, musicians, and disabled students." Moreover, it is UC policy "to admit a small proportion of students by exception to the eligibility requirements." In fact, then, "admission in exception" to UC-eligibility guidelines affected only a small number of admissions a year. More to the point, race, gender, and ethnicity were only three of many considerations in these decisions.
Instead of demystifying the debate over affirmative action, the text of SP-1 implies that the Board of Regents' resolution is necessary to undo an existing "system of artificial preferences" based on race and sex. It portrays affirmative action as dangerously widespread, highly systematized, and artificial, rather than as essential to a strategy for defending the principle of equal access to public education. Moreover, the board missed or suppressed this opportunity to contest the misperception of college admissions as a process of natural selection that sifts the deserving from the undeserving as long as we leave the process "pure." In fact, those who design admissions policies are all aware that students don't approach the gates of the university from a level playing field--the task force commissioned by Resolution SP-1 to develop new proposals for outreach programming itself noted "broad structural patterns" of disparities among schools and school systems and "a continuing pattern" of racial segregation in California's school system.
Unfortunately, such structural observations rarely inform discussions of outreach and diversity programming, which often treat diversity apart from ongoing histories of social and political disfranchisement. In this depoliticized climate, outreach efforts threaten to become a way of making the university appear open, increasing its visibility in the community and in schools, while allowing its empty rhetoric of excellence and merit and its segregation of the "qualified" and "unqualified" to go unchallenged in the public sphere.
The author is a doctoral candidate in English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, and Outreach Coordinator of Curbstone Press. This paper was presented at the 1999 CCCC Annual Convention in Atlanta.
Harders, Robin. "For the Good of the People: Affirmative Action in the 'University in Ruins.'" Between the Lines: The Newsletter of the Humanities at UCI 4.1 (1997): 4+.
New Directions for Outreach: Report of the University of California Outreach Task Force. July 1997. U of California. 11 Jan. 2000 <http://www.ucop.edu/acadaff/otf/otf.html>.
"Policy Ensuring Equal Treatment Admissions (SP-x1)." Policies of the Regents. 20 July 1995. Regents of the U of California. <http://www.ucop.edu/regents/policies/sp1>.
Prohibition against Discrimination or Preferential Treatment by State and Other Public Entities. Initiative Constitutional Amendment (Proposition 209). California Secretary of State. 11 Jan. 2000 <http://Vote96.ss.ca.gov/Vote96/html/BP/209.html>.
© 2000 by the Association of Departments of English. All Rights Reserved.
