Nation & World: Saturday, September 10, 2005

Berkeley lacking blacks

By MICHELLE LOCKE

The Associated Press

BERKELEY, Calif. — The incoming class of 4,000 students at the University of California, Berkeley, is expected to include just 129 black freshmen, a disturbing trend to leaders of the socially progressive and academically elite school.

"There are very talented people out there, I believe, who for a whole variety of reasons end up not coming to Berkeley or to another of the flagship campuses in the UC system," said Chancellor Robert Birgeneau.

The number of black freshmen this fall is slightly higher than last year but still an extreme minority.

About 11 percent of the 4,000-student class will be Hispanic, out of step with a state where Hispanics make up about 30 percent of the population.

Birgeneau, who took over the top job at Berkeley last year, has been outspoken in his dismay at minority enrollment figures and the need to change them. He questions whether voters intended such consequences when they passed Proposition 209, the 1996 ballot-measure banning consideration of race in public hiring, contracting and education.

But Ward Connerly, the former UC regent who chaired the Proposition 209 campaign, bristled at the idea that there's a problem with race-blind policies.

"I just don't understand why certain people have gotten themselves all worked up about who gets to go to Berkeley and UCLA, as if that's the only path to a successful life in California, because it is not and the evidence is abundant that it is not," he said.

The expected freshman class at Berkeley will be about 47 percent Asian American.

UC campuses have engaged in numerous recruitment and retention programs aimed at boosting minority enrollment, and admissions are up slightly for black students looking at aggregate figures for the 10-campus system. However, numbers remain low at Berkeley and UCLA, with more black students going to newer UC branches.

For James Marshall, 25, being one of about six black people enrolled at Berkeley's Haas School of Business in 2002 was "quite intimidating."

But his payoff came at graduation: job interviews with some of the country's most prestigious firms. "It's about getting that set of rules: OK, this is how you engage an employer; this is how you get this job," he said.

The Seattle Times