In the wake of several weeks of racial turmoil in the University of California system, UC regents on Wednesday promised to make a greater effort to enroll and retain African-Americans, Latinos and other minorities. At the same time, black student leaders from UCSD reminded the regents that they have failed to deliver on such promises in the past.
 
“We need you to take action and step away from…years of inaction,” Fnann Keflezighi, co-chair of the UCSD Black Student Union, told regents at a board meeting in San Francisco.
 
“[Minority] students don’t feel safe on campus,” added David Ritcherson, another co-chair of the organization at UCSD, where blacks make up about 1.6 percent of the student body.
 
The emotional intensity of the meeting did not escape UC President Mark Yudof.
 
“I heard the anger in your voice, but you’re entitled,” he said, calling the recent events “the worst acts of racism and intolerance that I have heard of on a college campus in 20 years.”
 
At the regents meeting, Yudof spoke of making the UC system’s admissions policy more uniformly holistic, meaning applicants’ test scores and grades would be considered in the context of their life experiences, personal accomplishments and backgrounds.
 
“I want a system that is less mechanical and takes a serious look at a range of talents and skills and history, and takes into account poverty,” Yudof said.
 
Holistic review is permitted at UC schools, but Yudof said he would like it to be required at all nine UC undergraduate universities. UCLA and UC Berkeley use the holistic approach most commonly, while others, like UC San Diego, use the more traditional formula, which, Yudof said, may position the schools to reject otherwise qualified low-income and minority students.
 
This kind of change would require approval by the system-wide faculty senate, and can be put up for discussion within a few months, according to officials.

The state currently bans affirmative action based on race for its university admissions.
 
“It is the absence of inclusion that frees hatred, that frees bigotry, that allows it to go unchallenged,” said Regent Eddie Island, “That’s our biggest problem.”
 
He also apologized to all students who felt attacked, saying, “We failed to provide a nurturing environment.”
 
Over the last several weeks, racially antagonistic incidents have included a “Compton Cookout” at UCSD in which guests were told to dress as stereotypes of low-income black people, a student television show at UCSD using a derogatory term for blacks, a noose and a KKK-style hood found on campus, as well as swastikas and anti-gay graffiti turning up multiple times at UC Davis.

UCSD Chancellor Marye Ann Fox has also pledged to take measures to retain more faculty of color on campus, and boost scholarship money for students from low-income backgrounds. The measures are part of a signed agreement she made with the Black Student Union.

Ritcherson, a fourth-year international economics major, was not entirely optimistic about the administration’s motivations. They would not be talking about making changes, he said, if “they didn’t get all this media attention, if the image wasn’t tainted.”
 
However, he welcomed the efforts they spoke of, and said, “It’s a good start.”
 

More from the L.A. Times
More from Sign On San Diego