Campus Rallies Back Affirmative Action

In a broad-based show of support for affirmative action on campus, thousands of students staged demonstrations around the state Thursday to demand a renewed commitment to diversity at the University of California.

Teach-ins, walkouts and rallies were staged at all nine UC campuses, including a 2,200-person march at UCLA that shut down busy Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood and led to the arrest of 33 students.

Chanting “No justice! No peace!,” the students sat down in the middle of the street and were led away by police, booked for failure to disperse and released.

At UC Berkeley, more than 3,000 demonstrators filled Sproul Plaza to hear the Rev. Jesse Jackson, then marched into the streets.

Student organizers of the so-called National Day of Action said they hoped the protests would prick the nation’s conscience and mobilize students to push the UC Board of Regents to rescind its rollback of affirmative action at the 162,000-student university system.

“We hope to send a clear signal to the regents: We will not allow them to take something away that we’ve fought so hard to preserve,” said Max Espinoza, a Chicano studies major at UCLA.

The protests were part of what organizers had described as a national effort to draw attention to educational access. But late Thursday, it was unclear how many campuses outside of California had participated.

Opinion about affirmative action is sharply divided on campus. All nine of the UC chancellors opposed the regents’ July vote to prohibit the use of race or gender as criteria in admission, hiring and contracting. And in the wake of that decision, about 1,200 UC faculty members have signed a petition calling upon the board to reconsider.

But the student newspaper at UC Berkeley recently editorialized in favor of the regents’ decision. And on campuses Thursday, the vast majority of students opted not to protest.

“We feel the UC Regents spoke and they spoke correctly,” said Todd Houser, 23, a UC San Diego communications major who is part of a UC-wide group called Students for Merit-Based Admissions.