The UC Board of Regents’ committee on education policies voted 12-1 against a proposal urging the UC Office of the President to challenge federal regulations in order to add a “multiracial” category on the ethnic data portion of the university’s admissions application.

According to the federal Office of Management and Budget’s Directive 15, universities should forgo any changes to current methods of collecting racial data pending further instructions from the federal government.

Despite these instructions, UC Regent Ward Connerly proposed a change that would have created an all-encompassing category for students who consider themselves members of more than one racial group.

Currently, students who check more than one ethnicity are assigned a single ethnicity by the university. The university uses a mathematical algorithm to assign the students to the least-represented ethnicity among those that they check, according to UCOP spokesman Brad Hayward.

According to Connerly, the university’s system for determining applicant’s race is comparable to racist Jim Crow laws, under which any amount of African-American ancestry was sufficient to classify a person as black.

“The collapsing decisions are guided by a policy that has its origins in slavery and the Jim Crow era known as the one-drop rule,” Connerly said. “The student is not consulted about this decision and a claim of having a system based on self-identification becomes hypocritical at that point.”

Connerly continued to critique the university’s policy by comparing the racial classification systems to the Nazi practice of segregating people based on visual inspections.

In the monthly meeting of the regents on Nov. 17, members of the board found fault in Connerly’s logic and cited reasons in opposition to the proposal, including the lack of knowledge of possible implications.

“The fact of the matter is not what box we check but how we’re using this data,” ex-officio Regent and Speaker of the State Assembly Fabian Núñez said.

UC President Robert C. Dynes was also opposed to the changes proposed by Connerly.

“I do not believe that we, as the university, have a sufficiently thorough understanding of the implications nor a sufficiently compelling mandate from the students we surveyed to request a change at this time,” Dynes said.

Dynes said that issues with the existing system needed attention and possible reform but feared that Connerly’s proposal would interrupt the data trends that track the demographics of the student body.

The university uses the current methodology in order to comply with federal reporting guidelines, which only allow one ethnicity for each student, Hayward said. These regulations date from the time when students were allowed to mark only one ethnicity, but are currently under review.

Minority advocates also challenged Connerly’s criticism of the university’s current classification system.

“The University of California chooses the ethnicity that will help students of mixed race. No one is going to complain about getting the upper hand,” said Janice Fitch, co-president of the Hapa Multiethnic Identity Students Community at UCSD. “But the multiracial category is a civil rights violation in some ways because, in this case, ‘multiracial’ is just another word for ‘other’ [which is not used for statistical purposes].”

During its meeting on Nov. 10, the A.S. Council passed a resolution opposing Connerly’s proposal. Among its reasons, the council cited the fact that the multiracial category would limit the ability of the university to collect information on its multiracial students.

“A multiracial box disenfranchises students because it undermines the students’ ability to be accurately counted,” A.S. President Jenn Pae said. “There is always room for improvement [in existing systems] but a blanket term is worse. Students should still be able to mark their different ethnicities.”

The resolution was drafted by Student Affirmative Action Committee Chair Emily Leach. After its approval by the council, the council sent the resolution to the regents, UC Office of the President, the UC Student Association, UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox and UCSD Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Joseph W. Watson.

“Students checking the multiracial box would become invisible,” Leach said. “It would block the collection of information from multiracial students and that is illegal.”