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University of California's Berkeley campus saw the effects of the end of affirmative action this week. Spencer Michels reports on the admission figures for next fall at Berkeley followed by four perspectives on minority admissions in California.

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SPENCER MICHELS: The Berkeley campus at the University of California, long considered a bastion of diversity, saw the effects of the end of affirmative action this week. Figures on new freshman admissions for next fall just announced show a dramatic drop in the number of African-Americans and Hispanics. Only 191 blacks are being offered a place. That's down from 562 last year. And just 600 Hispanics were granted admission to the prestigious campus, down from more than 1200. The total admission pool numbers about 8,000. And half of them have 4.0 grade point averages. It's so hard to get into Berkeley that at this flagship of the statewide system 800 blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians who had 4.0's were turned away. The new figures are the first since the university's regents--under pressure from Governor Pete Wilson--scrapped affirmative action policies for undergraduates, and since 1996, when the voters approved Proposition 209, which banned racial preferences in education. At a press conference called by the university to disclose the new figures, Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl said the new numbers are worse than he had hoped for.

ROBERT BERDAHL, Chancellor, UC Berkeley: I can tell you personally I'm very disappointed that our entering class will not better represent the impressive diversity that distinguishes this state. This has been a university that has been a vehicle for upwardly mobile students of all colors. We still have to be a place of opportunity. There's no question that how we go about this has been seriously constrained by this law.

SPENCER MICHELS: While six undergraduate campuses in the University of California's system reported drops in minority admissions, two registered increases. And system-wide figures, to be released tomorrow, are expected to be significantly less dramatic than the figures at Berkeley or UCLA. The two most highly ranked campuses had the biggest declines, with UCLA admissions of blacks falling 43 percent and Hispanics down 33 percent. At Berkeley, here are the figures: African-Americans comprise 6.8 percent of those admitted to last year's class, with only 2.4 percent this year. Hispanics saw a drop from 15.4 percent to 7.6 percent this year. Whites saw their percentage of admittees increased slightly from last year, and Asian-American percentages were up a little more, from 35 to 38 percent. Last fall, University of California Graduate Departments felt the first round of the end of affirmative action. At Berkeley's Boalt Hall only one African-American entered the first year class, provoking protests by supporters of racial diversity. Students then seemed somewhat divided over the issue.

STUDENT: I think we're at a state school, and we sort of owe it to the state of California to reflect its diversity.

STUDENT: I don't think that affirmative action admissions policy is the answer to that. I think it's different recruiting. I think it's really trying to get people to want to apply and come to Berkeley.

SPENCER MICHELS: At both UCLA and Berkeley officials have vowed to recruit more minority students. But those efforts appear not to have paid off thus far.

JIM LEHRER: Elizabeth Farnsworth in San Francisco takes it from there.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And now four perspectives on minority admissions in California. We begin with Robert Berdahl, chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, and Ward Connerly, a member of the board of regents of the University of California. He was a chief proponent of Proposition 209. Chancellor Berdahl, those are pretty dramatic figures at the University of California at Berkeley. What's behind them?

ROBERT BERDAHL, Chancellor, UC Berkeley: Well, they're very discouraging figures for us. What I think it reflects is the intense competitiveness of admission to a place like Berkeley, with 30,000 applicants and 8,000 admissions. We admitted only 27 percent of the students who applied. We turned away many, many students of all backgrounds who could have been outstanding students at Berkeley. We turned away--many of those students were minority students that we turned away, who could have been outstanding students at Berkeley. It reflects a very competitive environment for us.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You said in your press conference that the law has made it harder for you to reach the diversity you want. What did you mean? How did it affect you specifically?

ROBERT BERDAHL: What I meant was, there are two really approaches to admissions. I have believed very strongly in affirmative action because I believe that it's a part of the educational process that our students be educated in an environment that's diverse, with students of different backgrounds, students that have different experiences, students that have a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. And so we want to construct--we have wanted to construct a freshman class that reflected that diversity, that puts together all of those educational opportunities for students to have. That's one approach. It is to construct that class. Universities have done this for a long time. I grew up in South Dakota. As a South Dakotan, it was a lot easier to get into Harvard than it would have been if I had grown up in New York or Massachusetts, because they valued geographic diversity, as they do other kinds of diversity as well. So universities have for a long time approached admissions, not simply from the standpoint of individual merit, but also from the standpoint of how one puts together a class that enhances the educational experience. In the past we have done that. And we used race as one factor in that admissions process. We can't do that any longer, so that you see the results in that very sharp decline in minority admissions.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Ward Connerly, what's your reaction to the University of California at Berkeley figures?

WARD CONNERLY, University of California Regent: Elizabeth, I think the key word that the chancellor used is "construct." And I think that the people of California have said they don't want our universities involved in social construction and which really amounts to discrimination. All of the students that would have been admitted under the old system would have been there as a result of governmental discrimination on the basis of race. We, as a matter of policy, have said that is wrong. We recognize and appreciate the value of racial and ethnic diversity, along with all of the other forms of diversity, but there's a right way to get there and there's a wrong way to get there. And the university has to conduct itself in accordance with the rules and the values of our society. And we have concluded that we do not want to achieve this diversity by allowing our administrators at the universities, for good reason on their part, to engage in racial discrimination.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Were you surprised, Mr. Connerly, by the high number of students--the 800 students from minorities--who weren't admitted to UC Berkeley, even though they had straight 4.0's? Does that concern you?

WARD CONNERLY: Well, it concerns me about all the thousands of students. I mean, there might be 800 minorities, but there are thousands of Asians and whites who are also being turned down with 4.0. And I would hate to be the one to go to those students that we have admitted this year without using race and say to them, by the way, you scored well in the competition but we've got to take your seat and give it to somebody else because we need this diversity. There is--at the point of being redundant here, Elizabeth--there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. And the way we've been doing it in the past clearly represents discrimination. This is the smoking gun of the extent to which we were using race. It has not been one of many factors. It has been "the" factor.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Is that true? You were using discrimination before?

ROBERT BERDAHL: I don't think that I would refer to it as discrimination. We were using race as a factor. I don't think it was the dominant factor. When you look at students who have 4.0's and 1200 SAT averages and you look at these students and say, are these students worthy of being students at Berkeley, can these students make it at Berkeley, can these students perform and do the work, and the answer to that is yes. So that every class is a class that is--where we're trying to find the best quality of students, as well as the students who will bring the most to the campus.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And you tried to do that with the admissions this year using other--poverty, for example, get more minorities in--but it just didn't work? Is that what happened?

ROBERT BERDAHL: There really isn't any way in which you can achieve that kind of racial diversity without allowing race to be one factor in that process. And I think that's what this year has shown in this. Now, our determination, as Regent Connerly has said, has to be to build a diverse campus, despite this law. And so we're determined to reach out to the students who have been admitted to Berkeley and to make certain that they choose Berkeley. But my fear is that we are competing with the very best universities for a very small number of students, and that we may see the kind of decline in our undergraduate class that we have seen at Boalt Hall. I hope--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The law--

ROBERT BERDAHL: --that doesn't happen. And we're going to work very, very hard to see that that doesn't happen. The students are welcome there.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Connerly, what do you think should happen next? Are you concerned that some of the students accepted at Berkeley and UCLA just won't come because they feel unwelcome?

WARD CONNERLY: Well, I hope not. I hope that they will embrace the attitude that, look, I got here on my own, I can walk on that campus, now that it's been offered to me, and nobody can ever question. I shouldn't have to question, nor should anybody else question how I got here. This is a testament to the system working. There might be only 161, but, you know, that's not a small class. And so I would hope that they would realize that we want them, we encouraged them to come. We will do whatever it takes to get them to enroll because they earned the prize on their own. We also will try to increase the pool. Recognize that we draw from a very small pool. I think in 1995 there were less than 1,000 black students graduating from all of California's high schools who were UC eligible. We have to increase the pool. And that means changing the system, changing the K through 12, looking at private vouchers to try to get that pool up. It also means that the students and their families are going to have to work harder and recognize that education is important. Take advantage of the opportunities are there. Go to community college; get prepared, go to a state college. You don't have to go to Berkeley in order to get a great UC education. But get yourself prepared.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Chancellor, is that the way you see it, that the K through 12 classes have to be improved, and people just need to get better prepared?

ROBERT BERDAHL: Clearly, I think that's the long-term solution. Everybody has, I think, seen affirmative action as a temporary fix, as the temporary solution. The question that I think that we have to face is did we end it too soon, given the fact that so few students, as Regent Connerly has pointed out, actually qualify for admission to the University of California.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Well, thank you very much, Chancellor and Mr. Connerly, thank you for being with us.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And now for a broader look at all this we turn to Pete Wilson, the Republican governor of California, and to Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat who is speaker of the state assembly. Thank you both for being with us. Governor, what's your reaction to the figures at the University of California Berkeley?

GOV. PETE WILSON, (R) California: Elizabeth, my reaction is very much like that of Ward Connerly. We are both very disappointed but hardly surprised. And the reason is that--to answer your question what's behind these figures--what's behind them is the fact that the public schools of California, frankly, have short-changed these kids educationally, so that in an honest competition many who were formerly accepted on the basis of explicit race-based preferences simply can no longer make it. And the fault lies with our public educational system. That is why we have sought to remedy what is so wrong with it. It is penalizing poor children, those whose parents lack the income to provide them a better alternative. We cannot morally defend poor kids being trapped in bad schools. If we provide them with the health care and the kind of challenging education that every child of every ethnicity in every community in California deserves, we're going to achieve the diversity that is sought at the University of California and in every other way, but we will have done it on the natural, with high achievers of high intelligence having achieved their potential. That's how it ought to happen--not on the basis of unconstitutional and divisive explicit race-based preferences.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Mr. Speaker, what's your reaction to the figures?

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA, Speaker (D), California Assembly: Well, I think they're abomination--an abomination, rather. You know, anybody who sees those figures has to lament at what direction we're going to--going toward in this state. Unfortunately, if you had to point fingers, you'd have to point the finger at our governor, who brought us Proposition 209, a proposition that I think is going to close the door of opportunity on children of California. I'm a poster child for affirmative action, by the way, also the first speaker to graduate--first speaker of the California legislature to graduate from UCLA. I came in on the affirmative action program. Somebody gave me a chance. Somebody opened the doors for me. And it seems to me that our responsibility as leaders is to keep those doors open for other kids, kids who are under-represented, kids who come from poverty. I agree with the governor, that we need to focus on poor schools, on low performance schools. But the legislature and the governor has done very little to do that. When we, for instance, cut class size, there's not been one proposal from either the governor or anyone else to say let's cut class sizes smaller in low-performing schools and the schools in the inner city. Let's do more in terms of providing resources to those schools. California is 39th in per-pupil spending, dead last in class size, and dead last in the per capita expenditure of technology in our classroom. So as much as we talk about leveling the playing field, we're just not.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Governor Wilson.

GOV. PETE WILSON: Well, I'm sorry that the speaker has sought to be partisan. He's also been dishonest because the fact is this governor--with some courageous Democrats--I'm sorry that he is not included among them--have been able to take on the teachers union, buck them and win. We have insisted upon class size reduction, and when we sought to expand it, we were opposed by Senator Lochier, by the Democrats, and, in fact, they have failed to support the kind of demand for reform, which the public knows is necessary if we are to reform those inner city schools and stop cheating those kids. If what I hear from the speaker is support for what Mr. Connerly described as opportunity scholarships, it will be the first time. What I think we should do is make very clear what we have done, we have provided prenatal care, not just for the Medicaid-eligible, but for the working poor mothers. We have insisted that every child come to school able to concentrate. And we are insisting that those schools challenge the kids and give them the decent education that their native intelligence deserves. Unfortunately, Mr. Villaraigosa and his caucus have been distinctly lacking in the political courage necessary to overcome the teachers union's opposition to reform. And that's true, whether we're talking about reducing class sizes. It's true whether we're talking about testing, which he opposed last year at their bidding. It is true whether we are talking about demanding the kind of subject matter competency of teachers and the kind of accountability of teachers, which they have steadfastly opposed.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Let me just keep this on the affirmative action issue for a minute. Mr. Speaker--

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: I guess I pushed a button, didn't I? (laughing)

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Is it possible--

GOV. PETE WILSON: I wish he'd push a button in favor of reform.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Speaker--

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: Unfortunately, the truth hurts, but, like I said--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Let me interrupt you just--

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: --he was the author of Proposition 209, not me.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Let me interrupt you just one second. I want to go back to affirmative action because there are some questions I really want to get in here.

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: Sure.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Is it possible, and would it be acceptable in the state-wide university system that some of the universities--Riverside, for example, and Santa Cruz--would have more minorities--African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans--and UCLA and CAL would have fewer, would be mostly white and Asian-American?

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: It is possible.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Would that be acceptable? That seems to be what's happening so far this year.

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: Right. It is possible. In fact, that's what we think is going to happen in the next few days as we get the full story of the admittees. But it's unacceptable. We don't want to segregate the UC's. We want to make sure that they're places of diversity, places where all of California's children are welcome. I don't want to fight with the governor, and so I won't. What I will say is I challenge the governor to work with me to fund low-performing schools, to work with me, as he says, to level the playing field, to make sure that every California child has the opportunity that he talks about. The opportunity scholarships that he talks about, however, is another word--it's a euphemism for vouchers--and that's going away from support for public schools, which I think have been the great equalizer in this democracy and a great equalizer in the society. I'm here today because of those public schools, and so I couldn't support an opportunity scholarship as a solution to leveling the playing field.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Governor, what about the question about the system developing into a kind of two-tiered system?

GOV. PETE WILSON: It won't develop into a two-tiered system, Elizabeth, if you give kids of every race the opportunity to have a decent education. Then you will find that you've got high achievers in every ethnic group. God, I hope everyone believes that. I certainly do.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Are you concerned--

GOV. PETE WILSON: And if, in fact--and, if, in fact, you give them the opportunity, then you're going to get diversity at the University of California on every campus.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Are you at all concerned that meanwhile minorities will leave California? Let's say that the students admitted to CAL don't want to be there because there are so few and they go to Harvard or Yale or someplace else.

GOV. PETE WILSON: Well, if Harvard are Yale are offering them full scholarships, as they did to those who were admitted to Boalt Hall, I wouldn't be surprised that many will accept it. But what I will tell you is that there is a time coming in the not-to-distant future when people will look back on this time of race-based preferences as a true aberration. And when the most liberal court in the land--the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals--says that this kind of preference and quota system is an unconstitutional violation of the equal protections clause, then I think people should accept it and should concentrate on doing what is necessary to give every child full opportunity. Health care, genuinely educational quality, and the teachers union has steadfastly opposed a number of reforms, and I will be very specific about them.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Let me just--we only have a few seconds left--and I want to give Mr. Speaker Villaraigosa a chance to respond. We just have a few seconds left.

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: Well, let me just say, as I said, I'll end up with this--on the positive. I hope to work with the governor to make sure that we keep as many of these kids in our UC system. I am in the process now of sending letters to every one of those kids to ask them stay here, to stay at UCLA and UC Berkeley. I think we need those kids because we need--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay.

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: --the kind of diversity that they bring.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Thank you. We're out of time.

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: And I hope to work with him to that goal.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Thanks so much, both of you.

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