UC Regent Wants Anonymous Admissions

The University of California regent who successfully pushed to eliminate race and gender preferences in UC admissions now wants to drop applicants’ names from admissions forms to avoid even inadvertent bias.

“You know that Jamal Washington is likely to be an African American student,” Regent Ward Connerly said. “You know that Pablo Gonzales is going to be a Latino. . . . Having the names on the forms would be an invitation for [admissions officers] to consciously or subconsciously take race into account.”

Connerly said Wednesday that he has discussed the possibility of anonymous admissions with UC President Richard C. Atkinson, but has not formally proposed such a policy--and would drop the idea if it appears unworkable.

But it makes sense, he said, and he suggested that the initial cool reaction by some university officials reveals ongoing attempts to undermine the Board of Regents’ 1995 decision to abolish affirmative action in admissions.

“Their response to all of this is, ‘Gosh, don’t you trust us?’ ” said Connerly, a conservative Republican. “My candid answer to that is, ‘Well, no.’ ”

A spokesman for Atkinson said the UC president is keeping an open mind to new approaches as the affirmative action ban is phased in for undergraduate admissions next year.

But top UC admissions officers said Wednesday that Connerly’s idea would pose significant problems in keeping track of voluminous applicant records. They also said they were taken aback by Connerly’s affront to their integrity, saying his proposal assumes admissions officers cannot be trusted to carry out the new policy to eliminate sex, race and ethnicity from consideration in admissions.

“We take great pride in our admissions procedures and take great care in implementing our policies,” said Carla Ferri, director of undergraduate admissions for the nine-campus system. “Bottom line: We are professionals.”

As the process works now, admissions officials rely on an applicant’s name to identify and collect test scores, transcripts, letters of recommendation and other materials that can arrive independently of the application.

It would be a mammoth undertaking to eradicate the names from these documents, officials said, and it could heighten the likelihood of mixing up records that flood the university. UCLA, for instance, is now sifting through 31,000 applications for next fall’s class.

Even more problematic, officials said, would be sanitizing each UC applicant’s essay, called a “personal statement.”

In addition to demonstrating an applicant’s writing ability, personal essays give students a chance to outline their academic accomplishments, extracurricular activities and backgrounds.

“Are we going to take black ink, or white ink, to blot out the student’s affiliation with the Black Student Union or that they founded the Vietnamese club at high school?” asked Rae Lee Siporin, UCLA’s director of undergraduate admissions.

“If a person writes, ‘I’m the captain of the football team,’ are we to take that out because it gives us an indication of gender or race?” she asked. “I cannot fathom how this could be done.”

Connerly said he had not considered the problems of removing material from essays until Wednesday.

“It may very well be, instead of eliminating the names, we find some other way of making sure the process proceeds honorably,” he said. “Maybe we have the [UC] auditor audit the admissions process itself. Trust but verify.”