Fix Features

UCLA

UCLA Institutes Campus-wide Smoking Ban

by College Fix Staff on May 6, 2013

Last month UCLA became the first university in the University of California system to institute a campus-wide ban on smoking.

More here.

Click here to Like The College Fix on Facebook. / Twitter: @CollegeFix

{ 0 comments }

Not Again: Another Elite College Athlete Accused of Rape

by College Fix Staff on April 11, 2013

Earlier this week, The College Fix reported on disturbing allegations that an Ivy League wrestler had been charged with raping a female student in her dorm room.

Now, in a case with similar details, a UCLA water polo player has been arrested and accused of raping a fellow student in her dorm.

Twitter: @CollegeFix

{ 0 comments }

Polls Find Disdain for Race-Based College Admission Preferences

by Danielle Charette - Swarthmore College on January 24, 2013

A Supreme Court decision on whether universities can use race as an admissions factor is expected by June, however the court of public opinion has already weighed in on the matter – and Americans of all stripes stand largely against affirmative action, according to a variety of recent polls.

In those surveys, at least half if not more of those polled voiced opposition to race-based preferences.

Take a Rasmussen national telephone survey, which found only 24 percent of likely voters were in favor of using race as a factor in college admissions, while 55 percent stood opposed, and the rest were undecided. That survey was conducted 11 months ago.

More recently, a survey released in October found that 57 percent of Americans ages 18 to 25 – so-called young millennials – are opposed to racial preferences in college admissions or hiring decisions. In other words, nearly six out of every 10 opposed the practice.

“Although most younger millennials are firmly opposed to affirmative action programs in college admissions, relatively few report that they were hurt in the college admissions process because of their race or gender,” states a report on the results of the survey, conducted by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, & World Affairs at Georgetown University and the Public Religion Research Institute.

Results also indicated 47 percent of those in that age group “oppose programs that make special efforts to help blacks and other minorities to get ahead because of past discrimination.”

What’s more, the survey found “support for affirmative action programs diminishes considerably when younger millennials are asked specifically about affirmative action for college admission.”

The same month that survey was released, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Fisher v. the University of Texas, which deals with race-conscious college admissions in America’s public universities.

Most of academia has expressed support for the University of Texas, which aims to continue its practice of using race as a preferential factor in admissions decisions. Administrators and faculty at elite schools have also chimed in, defending the notion of “diversity” in the classroom. All members of the Ivy League, the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, and other big-name schools, have filed amicus briefs on University of Texas’ behalf.

Yet the higher education community’s overwhelming support for racial preferences is not mirrored by the general public.

This month, the American Enterprise Institute released a political report that compiled public opinion on a variety of issues, including affirmative action. In its publication, the organization cited data from a 2010 survey by the National Opinion Research Center which found that a vast majority of Americans – 81 percent – oppose affirmative action policies that favor African Americans.

What’s more, only between 44 and 62 percent of blacks polled voiced support for various minority preferences, the poll found. AEI’s public opinion analyst Karlyn Bowman notes, in an interview with The College Fix, that results on such a sensitive topic are always swayed by how pollsters’ frame the question.

Nevertheless, she points to perhaps the most consistent of all affirmative action data available, an annual survey by the UCLA-based Higher Education Research Institute. The poll has found that, since 1995 and every year since, roughly 50 percent of college freshmen believe race-based university admissions preferences should be abolished.

“You could balance a glass of water on that line it’s so flat,” Bowman says.

Fix contributor Danielle Charette is a student at Swarthmore College.

Click here to Like The College Fix on Facebook.

IMAGE: Donkey Hotey/Flickr

{ 7 comments }

Professors: Obama Win Means Multiracial, Social Progressives Control Country

by Jennifer Kabbany - Associate Editor on November 8, 2012

The Tea Party Movement is dead. It’s time President Barack Obama stood up to Republicans on issues such as climate change and gun control in a “more forceful way.” Multiracial, social progressives are in charge of the country and its policies now.

That’s a snippet-summary of how several professors responded to an emailed request by The College Fix to opine on Obama’s re-election and what it all means.

UCLA history and anthropology professor Andrew Apter noted Obama’s re-election signals a fundamental shift in American political consciousness away from ideas crystalized by the Tea Party movement and toward what “working people, gays, people of color, and women that cannot relate to the Republican message” want from their government.

“Even Fox News commentators were getting this point,” Apter said, referencing the pundits’ comments during election night coverage. “The idea of who Americans are and what America is has shifted, and in a sense we have finally entered the 21^st century.”

Apter added that “the Tea Party is finished as a viable political platform,” “white power failed to galvanize sufficient racist resentment to prevail demographically,” and “women and people of color must be respected by the Republican Party if Republicans want to win the presidency.”

Another UCLA history professor, Robin Derby, said she is “thrilled about Obama’s re-election” and “hopeful this will give him the moral authority to take action on a number of issues he was not able to in his last term, including climate change, closing Guantanamo base, gun control, among others.”

“With this popular mandate he should be able to stand up to the Republicans in a more forceful way than in the past,” she said.

Over in Chicago – Obama’s old turf – University of Chicago Professor Timothy Knowles, director of the school’s Urban Education Institute, told The College Fix that Obama’s prowess with the economy helped him return to the Oval Office.

“The president won because he has brought the country back from the economic brink,” Knowles said.

Over on the East Coast, Professor Lawrence Bobo, the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, responded to The College Fix’s request for comment by pointing to a piece he wrote after the election for TheRoot.com. In it, he notes that America’s priorities have changed.

“(It’s) not simply about the agenda of fundamentalist Christians, or anti-government zealots or affluent, older white men,” he wrote. “This election … was about an America that is increasingly made up of people of color, especially Latinos. It was about an America that is tired of taxes and economic policies that favor bankers and the very wealthy … It was about an America that respects the rights of gays and lesbians and the bodies of women.”

Multiracial social progressives are in charge now, he opined.

“This election … is the consolidation, first and foremost, of a multiracial progressive Obama coalition that is now the dominant electoral force in American national politics,” Bobo noted. “Republicans will never again, so long as their policy agenda remains as it is, command a winning national coalition. Too many fundamental social trends run against it.”

IMAGE: Dave Hosford/Flickr

Click here to Like The College Fix on Facebook.

{ 4 comments }

‘Dream University’ no longer reality

by College Fix Staff on September 14, 2012

Plans at UCLA to create a schooling program for students in the country illegally —- with tuition costs far less than what mainstream students pay —- have been axed. The Daily Bruin and Inside Higher Ed posted a statement from university officials that says:

“UCLA has determined that the agreement between the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education and the National Labor College, which resulted in the creation of the National Dream University certificate program, was negotiated without the necessary approvals from UCLA’s academic and administrative leadership. As a result, the agreement has been declared void and UCLA has directed the Labor Center to suspend all work on National Dream University.”

The College Fix contributor Alex Jakubowski reported last month that the program, six online course credits transferable to any university that will accept the credits, would have cost the undocumented students enrolled in the program $2,490 —- as opposed to standard UCLA in-state tuition of $12,686.

The notion behind the effort was to make a college education available to struggling young undocumented students, but it was a bad idea on many fronts. UCLA officials distanced themselves from it in their statement:

“It is important to remember that the envisioned certificate program would have been offered through the National Labor College and not UCLA; news reports suggesting that those enrolled in the program would be UCLA students are completely inaccurate.”

Unfortunately, campus officials also left the door open to revive the project, saying “… any agreements would require a comprehensive academic and financial plan that has approval from appropriate parties.”

Click here to Like The College Fix on Facebook.

{ 1 comment }

UCLA Institute Creates Controversial ‘University’ for Illegal Immigrants

by Alex Jakubowski - Northwestern on August 22, 2012

Earlier this month the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, a division of the UCLA Institute for Research and Labor and Employment, and the National Labor College announced their new educational partnership program—National Dream University. National Dream University was created with the goal of inspiring undocumented students to break into the higher education world.

The program, six online course credits transferable to any university that will accept the credits, will cost the thirty-five accepted students $2490, as opposed to standard UCLA in-state tuition of $12,686. Several of the classes will be staffed by UCLA professors, while others will be taught by notable liberal activists such as Reverend James Lawson and Tom Hayden. While currently only a one-year program is available, Project Coordinator Alma Castrejon hopes that they will be able to offer Associate’s or Bachelor’s degrees in the near future.

The idea to make education available to struggling young undocumented students is nothing new. Last year five university professors in the state of Georgia formed Freedom University, a one year program aimed at providing opportunities for undocumented students to break into higher education. While not officially accredited or state funded, Freedom University offers students the opportunity to prepare for college, regardless of their immigration status.

According to CRLE Director and former attorney for the Service Employees International Union Kent Wong, the program’s goal is to “give undocumented students in particular the opportunity to learn about labor rights, and possibly become involved in social justice movements.”

For students to be accepted, however, they must have already shown commitment to these causes. According to their website, in order to be considered for admission students must have graduated from high school, maintained a 2.7 GPA, and “have demonstrated activism within the immigrant rights community, or the labor rights movement.”

While many private universities offer highly directed and politically-oriented programs for their students, National Dream University has drawn scrutiny due to its relationship with UCLA, a public university funded by the State of California.

While the State of California cut off direct funding for the IRLE in 2007, since then the organization has survived on a combination public funding from the University of California school system, the US Department of Labor ($220,000), the California Department of Industrial Relations ($355,000), and the City of Los Angeles ($50,000) as well as private donations from large left-wing unions and political organizations. Some of these include the Ford Foundation ($1.2 million), the Open Society Institute ($176,000) and SEIU ($12,000).

Despite the organizational oversight of UCLA over the IRLE and its subsidiary groups under the Division of Social Sciences, IRLE Director Chris Tilly claims he never consulted with his superiors on the issue of the National Dream University.

Some undocumented students who would otherwise be attracted to this type of entry program could be turned off by the political directive. One undocumented UCLA student, Seth Ronquillo, in fact noted to his school’s newspaper that while he supported the program’s overall goal of offering educational opportunities to undocumented students, the “curriculum’s focus on labor rights is a deterrent” for him because he wants to explore other subject areas. Nevertheless, many immigration experts see labor as a critical partner for the advancement of undocumented students.

According to Dr. Jaime Dominguez, a professor of Political Science and minority rights expert at Northwestern University “as with any immigration progressive legislation, labor is the key pillar in maintaining support, as well as for its implementation.” Still, with taxpayers on the hook for much of the cost many worry about National Dream University’s true intentions for its graduates.

Fix Contributor Alex Jakubowski is a junior at Northwestern.