The parents and students at View Park Preparatory High School in the Crenshaw district had some tough questions for the visiting UCLA chancellor.
Would more African American students be admitted to UCLA for the next school year? Or would the much-publicized changes in the school's admissions process just not amount to much?
The Westwood campus is racing to revamp its admissions procedures in time for the students who are applying this month for next fall's freshman class. And as it does, it is walking a fine line: how to encourage black students to apply without raising unrealistic expectations -- and without alienating other applicants.
UCLA's admissions overhaul, announced just two months ago, comes at a time of heightened angst and renewed attention nationwide to the polarizing issues of race and college admissions. In Michigan, voters in Tuesday's election overwhelmingly approved a ban on affirmative action in universities and other public institutions, a measure closely modeled on California's decade-old Proposition 209. Students in California, meanwhile, marked the proposition's Nov. 5 anniversary with rallies and speeches urging voters to repeal it.
So the questions leveled at UCLA's acting chancellor by the View Park parents and students reflected the passions surrounding the issue -- and skepticism that the changes underway would have an immediate, significant effect on black enrollment.
Was it true, a woman asked, that UCLA had satellite admissions offices in Asia? And no disrespect, another said, but could Norman Abrams, the interim chancellor, assure them that his successor would share his commitment to boosting the declining numbers of African American students on campus?
Abrams, who had waited at the back of the charter school's crowded community room for nearly two hours Wednesday evening before his turn to speak, answered the questions slowly, carefully and occasionally with humor.
He said he hoped the numbers of black students admitted -- and enrolled -- at UCLA would rise under the new system but could not predict by how much. He said the campus did not have admissions offices in Asia. And he said he was certain that UCLA's next permanent chancellor would share his priorities.
Abrams said he had come to the parents' meeting at View Park, a school with a largely black student body, to underline that point. "I wanted you to understand that UCLA, at the highest levels of its administration, is committed to increasing our African American admissions," said Abrams, a longtime UCLA law professor who became acting chancellor July 1. The words "We Want You at UCLA" shone on a screen behind him.
