UCLA

These analytical briefs are part of a series on the status of Park Mesa Heights, a neighborhood located in South Los Angeles, a 70 square block area anchored by Crenshaw Senior High School. The Los Angeles Urban League (LAUL) has established a 5-year strategic plan to improve the quality of life in this area through advocacy, leadership and neighborhood change. UCLA Department of Urban Planning, with support from UCLA’s Center for Community Partnerships, provided technical support for this effort by assembling, analyzing and publishing information related to the state of housing, employment, education and public safety in the immediate neighborhood and surrounding areas. By using the most current and geographic detailed available data, UCLA assembled information that can help inform the 5-year plan by providing insights into the magnitude and nature of the challenges and issues facing Park Mesa Heights stakeholders.

Responding to the dismal numbers of African Americans enrolling at UCLA for the freshman class for Fall 2006 – only 96 students, the lowest number since the 1970's - the Alliance for Equal Opportunity in Education (AEOE), a historic collaboration between community-based organizations, students, alumni, faculty, support staff, and city and state representatives, meet weekly for the past year in order to apply pressure to UCLA and the UC Regents.

The Los Angeles Times ran a front page article on June 3rd titled "A Startling Statistic at UCLA" which depicts the abysmal state of African American admissions at the University of California Los Angeles. As a graduate of UCLA's Anderson School of Management, a former member of the Anderson School's Alumni Board and Executive Committee, the former Executive Vice President of one of the nation's leading college access initiatives for low income students, and now as the President of the Los Angles Urban League, the issue of UCLA's declining African American enrollment is one that I have been personally involved with for many years.

Importantly, these atrocious trends are not only occurring at the undergraduate level, but also at the graduate level, where representation of African Americans has now fallen to below 3% in many of the major graduate programs. African American enrollment in many of UCLA's graduate school programs has now dwindled to single digits.

What is happening to our great university and to our state - both of which formerly were great beacons in their aggressive pursuit of diversity? Today, the passion for uplifting communities through education has seemingly been replaced by a complacency and acceptance of the status quo. And if these trends continue, they spell disaster both for our great city and our once progressive state.