just read this NYT article, “the new affirmative action,” written by David Leonhardt, about how UCLA is dealing with fallout of prop 209. for context, it starts out with describing the situation UCLA found itself in after prop 209 passed:
The changes on U.C.L.A.’s campus were hard to miss. In 1997, the freshman class included 221 black students; last fall it had only 100. In the region with easily the largest black population west of the Mississippi River, the top public university had a freshman class in which barely 1 in 50 students was black.
and goes on to pursue a very interesting discussion & exploration of how UCLA (and other schools, potentially, if bans on affirmative action persist) is getting around fucked up laws. also nice to see such an in-depth story when it sometimes feels like people are sick of hearing about affirmative action or think we’ve somehow moved beyond the need for affirmative action. country still needs it, but now it seems we’ve got to rely on outsourcing to non-government entities to enact some equal opportunity goodness.
