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Wednesday, September 25, 1996

The following is a message to the university community from UC President
Richard C. Atkinson.

Mike Lassiter
UCOP Director, News & Communications

-------------------
September 1996

Members of the University Community:

The November general election is approaching and with it a ballot measure
that touches all of us in California--as voters, as citizens, as members of
the UC community.  Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative,
is a defining issue that will shape California's and the University's future
in fundamental ways if it is approved by the people of this state.  

It is an understandably controversial and emotional issue.  My purpose in
sending this message to the University community is to remind all of us of
the University of California's abiding commitment to the twin goals of
excellence and diversity.

Last year The Regents acted to end the use of race, religion, ethnicity, and
gender as factors in our admissions and employment practices.  The changes
approved by The Regents may be affected by the outcome of the election.
They may not.  In either case, our goal must remain constant and our course
steady.  Every intellectual community must attract a variety of ideas and
perspectives in order to flourish.  And as a public institution of higher
learning in the nation's most ethnically and culturally diverse state, we
must continue to serve Californians of every race, gender, creed, ethnicity,
and socioeconomic background.  Virtually everyone agrees that a healthy
California--the California of the future--needs an educated citizenry that
draws its strengths and vitality from all segments of society.

Our goal will be more difficult to accomplish without taking race,
ethnicity, and gender into account.  We will need to build on our extensive
experience with outreach efforts, going back more than 30 years, to maintain
the University's diversity.  In the past year we have made some significant
strides:

I.	We have created the Outreach Task Force, whose mission is to develop new
strategies and new sources of funding to help increase the number of
minority and low-income students who are academically qualified and
competitive for admission to UC.

II.	An additional $3 million has been set aside in the University's budget
to assist the campuses in launching new programs to help prepare more
underrepresented and low-income students for study at the University.

III.	We have issued new admissions guidelines, in response to The Regents'
action eliminating the use of race and gender, from which campuses will
develop specific criteria for students enrolling in the Spring Quarter of 1998.

IV.	We are strengthening our partnership with the schools.  The University
already has a number of innovative and exemplary programs that offer
tutoring and counseling for students, professional development for teachers,
applied and collaborative research for the improvement of schools.  We are
building on those efforts across the University system to make them even
more accessible and effective in serving the schools, teachers, and talented
young people of California.  

Even after the November election, and regardless of the outcome of
Proposition 209, many questions will remain--and UC will most certainly
remain the focus of continued scrutiny and, most likely, the center of
continued debate.

We are an academic community and, as such, our way of dealing with
differences is through the reasoned discussion of ideas and the respectful
treatment of differing views.  In this spirit, I remind you that employees
have every right to speak out on ballot measures, providing they do so on
their own time and without the use of University resources.

I urge you to keep our values as a community of learning in mind as we face
the changes ahead and ask you to join me in spreading the word that the
University of California remains unwaveringly committed to diversity.

Richard C. Atkinson