UC Regents Derail Vote on Ending VIP Admissions

Two University of California regents tried and failed Thursday to persuade their colleagues to end the long-standing practice of setting aside student admission slots for friends and relatives of big donors.

A resolution to curtail any fund-raising influence on admissions was quickly scuttled through parliamentary rules before it could even be debated, prompting one of its authors to accuse UC administrators of conspiring with sympathetic regents to suppress the discussion.

“We are arguably one of the premier public forums in America, where we should be able to debate any idea,” said Regent Ward Connerly after the resolution he co-authored with student Regent Jess Bravin was pulled from the agenda. “And yet the chancellors and the university president conspired with members of the committee on educational policy to suppress discussion of the issue.

“I am disgusted,” Connerly said.

Three campus chancellors dismissed Connerly’s accusations as nonsense, but acknowledged that they had telephoned regents urging them to vote against the resolution that would have ended their “flexibility” in special admissions for those with ties to major contributors.

“We do need some flexibility to determine what is best for the entire institution,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien. “We must trust people on the front lines, the chancellors, the admissions officers and faculty. If you have a doubt, dismiss them, but don’t try to micromanage them.”

The issue that Connerly calls “VIP set-asides” surfaced a year ago after a series of articles in The Times documented that more than 200 VIP applicants were admitted to UCLA since 1980 after they had been initially rejected or classified for denial.

Although such favors are routine at private universities, the disclosures of preferences for the well-connected were embarrassing for the public university because they surfaced just as the Board of Regents was abolishing affirmative action programs that gave some preference for race, ethnicity and gender.

Responding to public criticism, the regents a year ago passed a vaguely worded resolution that cautioned against any attempts by regents or elected officials to “influence inappropriately” the outcome of individual admissions decisions--without mentioning preferences granted major donors.

At the time, Connerly, who sponsored the resolution, sided with the majority in citing the need to “preserve flexibility.”

Connerly said Thursday that he changed his mind after learning from Bravin that the practice is more widespread than he previously thought.

His ire grew as chancellors at the nine UC campuses and other top UC officials lobbied the regents to reject the resolution.

When the matter came up, Bravin pleaded with the regents to give it a fair hearing. “I realize that the administration is really uncomfortable with this,” he told his colleagues. “I think to simply to suppress discussions is not in keeping with the university’s traditions.”

Although a majority of the regents voted to shelve the issue, UC President Richard C. Atkinson promised to bring it back before the regents in several months after it had been fully discussed by the Academic Senate.

But the debate raged outside the meeting, which was held on the UCLA campus.

Connerly questioned suggestions that the loss of special admissions would cost the university system millions of dollars in contributions.

“We may lose some money, but we might lose some money if we didn’t take a bribe, too,” he said. “There is a basic ethical question here. . . . Either you believe it is permissible to take connections into account or you don’t. . . . As a public university, I don’t think we ought to do that.”

UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young defended the practice.

“It is not inappropriate with limited numbers to take institutional needs into account,” Young said, though he limited his support of special admissions to “cases when the person is fully qualified and only when you aren’t taking a place away from anybody else.”