UC Regent Ward Connerly is behind an initiative that would ban state agencies, including the University of California, from collecting racial and ethnic data.

The Racial Privacy Initiative, if passed, will enact an amendment to California’s state constitution that will effectively prohibit classifying “”any individual by race, ethnicity, color or national origin in the operation of public education, public contracting or public employment”” within the state of California, with limited exception.

Connerly and the American Civil Rights Coalition authored the initiative.

In the past, Connerly has been relatively successful in his crusade to eliminate affirmative action and racial classification in public agencies.

RPI is the first initiative of its kind that would virtually phase out almost all racial classifications made by the state government. However, the initiative does exempt medical research, law enforcement, and the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, all of which may continue to specify individuals by race “”lawfully.””

Kevin Nguyen, a spokesperson for the ACRC, said the initiative is a progressive step in race relations.

“”It’s much more productive and unifying to end this arbitrary and artificial system of racial classification,”” Nguyen said.

After serving on the UC Board of Regents for two years, Connerly authored Standing Policy 1 in 1995, the resolution that prohibited race to be a systematic basis for an applicant’s admission to the University of California. After SP-1’s passage in July 1995, Connerly chaired the California Civil Rights Initiative, which passed as Proposition 209 in November 1996.

Proposition 209 banned any preferential treatment on the basis of race in the hiring and admission of individuals in local and state governments and schools.

SP-1 was rescinded in May 2001, but Proposition 209 is still state law.

Since the campaign for RPI was launched in April 2001, the UC Office of the President has not taken a position on the proposal. According to Hanan J. Eisenman, UCOP media coordinator of admissions, the voluntary questionnaire regarding the applicant’s ethnicity on the UC application is used to “”help identify trends in enrollment.””

Nguyen cites the university’s ongoing use of racial statistics as one of the factors that motivated Connerly to spearhead the initiative.

“”What [Connerly] saw as a policy maker at UC was an obsession over racial classification, such as the check-boxes that continue to appear on admission applications,”” Nguyen said.

Some student leaders at UCSD are not as positive about the initiative, which would no longer allow the monitoring of race in university admission and hiring practices.

A.S. Vice President External Dylan de Kervor said that UCSD is statistically the least racially diverse campus in the UC system, and RPI would impede efforts to diversify the student body.

“”Without information regarding the racial makeup of our campus, there is no way to tell how bad the situation really is,”” de Kervor said. “”It lets [the University of California] off the hook because there will be no clear way of telling how the problem is being solved if there is no racial data to work with.””

UCSD Conservative Union President Vince Vasquez is supportive of Connerly’s initiative.

“”Our policies of education, employment and contracts should not delineate upon artificial, socially constructed notions of ‘racial background,'”” Vasquez said in a statement.

Nguyen contends that classification of race is irrelevant, and that society should work toward tracking people along nonracial lines. RPI, he says, is a step in that direction.

De Kervor disagrees, saying ignoring race will not end discrimination.

“”Increasing diversity at UCSD is going to come by erasing racism, not race,”” de Kervor said.

Connerly must attain 670,518 signatures by June 27 for the initiative to make the November 2002 ballot as a state proposition.

Last week the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that fellow Regent John Moores held a fund-raiser for the initiative at his home in Rancho Santa Fe. Connerly appeared at the event.

Moores, who is the majority owner of the San Diego Padres baseball club, donated $20 million to UCSD in 2000 for the construction of the Rebecca and John Moores Cancer Center.

Phone calls left for Moores were not returned in time for publication.