Wednesday, May 6, 1998
Community Briefs
Alternative to Prop. 227 approved
Bilingual education has become a more complicated issue for
Californians as the legislature approved an initiative authored by
Senator Dede Alpert, which is being touted as an alternative to
Proposition 227.
Senator Alpert’s initiative plans to hold schools more
accountable by mandating student testing and having the Board of
Education intervene if English proficiency remains stagnant.
The measure would require schools to design their own bilingual
instructional programs subject to annual review.
On the other hand, Proposition 227 would require students with
limited English proficiency to take a year of "sheltered" English
emersion before being placed in regular classrooms. Proposition 227
was authored by Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley businessman. `
Gov. Pete Wilson declined to comment on whether he plans to veto
the measure. However Wilson did say, "It reminds me of the belated
efforts made by the Legislature to try to forestall passage of
Proposition 13."
Group to sue over Berkeley admissions
A national pro-affirmative action group intends to file a
lawsuit against UC Berkeley for rejecting more than 800 minority
students who had high Scholastic Assessment Test scores and grade
point averages.
At a meeting in Wheeler Auditorium on Saturday, Shanta Driver,
the national coordinator for the Coalition to Defend Affirmative
Action By Any Means Necessary, said that the 800 students who had
at least a 4.0 GPA and got more than 1200 on the SATs deserve to
get into the university because of the adversity they faced.
Driver said that "vast differences in opportunities" available
to minority students in California’s primary and secondary schools
do not offer minority students an equal education to that of whites
and Asians. She called for students to organize and support the
proposed lawsuit, which could be filed as early as two weeks from
now.
In selecting next year’s freshman class, the university was
forbidden from taking into consideration race, gender or national
origin.
The new admission process was the result of a voter-approved
statewide law eliminating affirmative action from public
institutions.
The number of underrepresented minority students admitted to
next year’s freshman class fell 54.7 percent.
Driver said she plans to work with the legal defense arm of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the
Mexican American Legal Defense Fund to fight for the admission of
the 800 students who were rejected.
"We don’t want to sell out in the courtroom," she said. "It is a
case of people completely qualified being kept out. Nothing that
the right wing has said can be argued in the case of the rejected
800 students."
More than 40 students nationwide – the majority of whom hail
from UC Berkeley – have already asked to be listed as co-defendants
in a separate lawsuit accusing the University of Michigan Law
School of discrimination.
In that case, Barbara Grutter, a white woman, said she was the
victim of reverse discrimination when her application to the law
school was rejected while eight minority applicants with lower Law
School Admission Test scores and GPAs were accepted.
The students are supporting the university’s stance that it did
not discriminate.
They argue that a possible decision favoring Grutter and
eliminating affirmative action at the law school would damage their
chances of entering the school and pose a serious risk to their
education.
Compiled from Daily Bruin staff and wire reports.