Dear Colleagues:

The voters have approved Proposition 209 and the University of California will comply with the law. At my request, Provost C. Judson King has written to the University's Chancellors today to give them specific guidance about implementing the language of Proposition 209. We are well along in this process as a result of The Regents' action last year eliminating race, gender, and ethnicity as factors in admission, hiring, and contracting. We have also worked hard during the past year to make it clear that the University continues to welcome students, faculty, and staff from throughout California's increasingly diverse society.

Now we must also look to the broader issue of how, in light of Proposition 209, we can best fulfill our responsibilities as a public university in the nation's most ethnically and culturally diverse state.

One idea has tended to unite people on all sides of this extraordinarily divisive and passionate debate. It is that diversity is an asset to California and can only be achieved by extending educational opportunity to disadvantaged young people. The question facing education is clear: How do we establish new paths to diversity consistent with the law?

I intend to take the following steps:

I. We will accelerate our efforts to strengthen and expand our outreach programs. The University of California was one of the first to establish such programs over thirty years ago, and ours have been among the most successful in the nation. Today we spend more than $100 million a year on campus and systemwide programs that serve students and the K-12 schools. But the need far outstrips our resources. We need to reach more students and to coordinate our programs across the system to make the best possible use of the University's wealth of talent and expertise.

II. We will reinvigorate our partnership with California's K-12 schools. UC already has over 800 programs that offer tutoring and counseling for students, professional development for teachers, applied and collaborative research for the improvement of schools. Now we need to involve the University more broadly than ever before in schools and community colleges that serve large numbers of disadvantaged and minority students. We will give special attention to the ways in which the new learning technologies can magnify the impact of our efforts.

III. The report of the UC Outreach Task Force, due in February of 1997, will be key to these efforts. It is reviewing the scope and success of our current outreach programs and will recommend specific strategies the University can use, in cooperation with the schools and the other higher education segments, to strengthen our programs and seek new sources of funding for them. The Task Force consists of leaders from the business world, education, and government. Together this distinguished team can do much more than any one of them could do separately.

IV. We have already set aside an additional $3 million in the University's budget to assist the campuses in launching new programs to help prepare more disadvantaged and low-income students for study at the University. We will seek further funding from the State to help us accomplish the steps I have just outlined, which must be taken if we are going to preserve the diversity essential to California's future.

V. Finally, a word about our hiring and contracting activities. I want to emphasize that the University continues to seek a diverse pool of applicants for jobs and contracts, consistent with Federal law, the Regents' resolution on hiring and contracting, and Proposition 209.

California is changing and so must we. What cannot change, however, is the University's historic responsibility to serve Californians of every background and condition, including greater numbers of disadvantaged young people. I am confident we have the individual and institutional resolve to keep the commitment to diversity alive for the next generation of Californians.

Sincerely,

Richard C. Atkinson
President