May 17, 2002

Bending Admissions to Political Ends

By BOB LAIRD

This spring, for the first time, the University of California system admitted for fall enrollment as freshmen more minority students than it did before it abandoned affirmative action, in 1998. Students from Latino, black, or American Indian backgrounds made up 19.1 percent of those admitted, up from 18.8 percent in 1997, the final year that the university system used racial preferences.

But at Berkeley, where I was director of undergraduate admissions from 1993 to 1999, the numbers

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