Former UCLA athletes try to make a difference
This is about where we left off with Brendon Ayanbadejo: playing the biggest game of his career in Miami, his mind on those who haven't received the same great opportunities.
In December 1998, Ayanbadejo was a senior linebacker at UCLA and the undefeated Bruins had one game against the University of Miami standing between them and a trip to the Fiesta Bowl "national championship" game. Ayanbadejo and some teammates wanted to use the high-profile game to call attention to the diminished number of under-represented minorities at UCLA after the implementation of the anti-affirmative action Proposition 209.
Now he's on the Chicago Bears, preparing for the Super Bowl at Dolphin Stadium on Sunday. After that he'll hop on a jet to Hawaii for the Pro Bowl as a special teams player. And yet he's taking time to bring attention back to UCLA's African American enrollment crisis that has only worsened in the time since he left campus, to the point black students made up only 2% of this year's freshman class.
Ayanbadejo and former UCLA basketball star Baron Davis have formed We Should Not Be the Only Ones (weshouldnotbetheonlyones.org) a group whose name refers to the increasing indication that the only black students UCLA appears to want are those with exceptional vertical leaps or 40-yard dash times.
The numbers demand words. Loud words, angry words. For the fall 2006 freshman class, less than 100 African Americans enrolled, the fewest in more than 30 years. Twenty of them were on athletic scholarship, which means we're getting dangerously close to making a fact from the stereotypical assumption that a black student on campus is an athlete. A ranking of African American student admissions in the fall of 2005 put UCLA 29th among the top 30 colleges and universities.
For those athletes who want to make a difference, it means stepping into the hostile venues of bureaucracy and politics.
"It's a daunting task, but you've got to start somewhere," Ayanbadejo said. "We're at the point where we're saying, 'This is enough.'
"We're here to bring light to the situation, see if we can make change through dialogue and bring people on board."
UCLA interim Chancellor Norman Abrams' efforts to increase African American enrollment so far have included meeting with the Black Alumni Assn. and attending community forums. He says the new admissions process will incorporate students' circumstances in addition to their grades and scores. The university reported that the number of African Americans applying to UCLA increased this year.
