Recent concern over the absence of a ‘Middle Eastern’ option on the UC application has led university officials to consider expanding the range of racial categories, an attempt to recognize ethnicities presently grouped as ‘white.’
According to UC spokesman Ricardo Vazquez, the university currently includes Middle Eastern students in the ‘white’ category to keep classifications as simple as possible.
On the front lines of the campaign to add a ‘Middle Eastern’ option to the UC application are UCLA student organizations the United Arab Society, the Iranian Student Group, the Armenian Student Association, the Afghan Student Association and the Syrian Club.
Yasi Chehroudi, president of ISG at UCLA, said admissions statistics are not useful when they combine racial groups.
‘When the university clumps people, it’s hard to see trends,’ Chehroudi said. ‘It’s detrimental when the demographics don’t match.’
The current U.S. Census Bureau similarly categorizes people of Middle Eastern descent as white. Middle Eastern interest groups lobbied for this change in the late 1970s in order to achieve greater immigration rights.
However, Faisal Attrache, President of UCLA’s UAS, said this categorization is no longer an advantage.
‘As Arab, we don’t feel that ‘white’ is representative of us,’ Attrache said. ‘No one really thinks of us as white.’
The UC application currently includes 28 ethnicity options, 23 of which were added in 2007 as part of the Asian Pacific Coalition’s ‘Count Me In’ campaign. The campaign, much like the one now being organized by Middle Eastern students at UCLA, lobbied for the inclusion of more ethnic categories on the UC application.
Chehroudi said she would like to see several different subcategories included on the application, including Iranian, Arab, Armenian, Syrian and Turkish.
The UCLA campaign has not spread to the other UC campuses, though it has received student support from other universities ‘shy;’mdash; due in part to a March 31 article in the Los Angeles Times about the present UC policy.
‘It is disappointing that the UC system, especially considering its prestige, does not have a ‘Middle Eastern’ option,’ said Hameen Oriqat, member of the UCSD Muslim Student Association and Students for Justice in Palestine. ‘Other state and private schools have the category, so I don’t know why we don’t.’
According to Vazquez, the addition of the ‘Middle Eastern’ option would involve modifications to the university’s computer systems as well as to computers at the individual campuses.
He said in an e-mail Wednesday that adding racial categories could improve the quality and usefulness of student data, but they are still considering the logistical and monetary implications of such a change.
Readers can contact Heather Houry at [email protected].