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By Michaele Turnage

Daily Bruin Reporter

Three years after SP-1, the UC policy that ended affirmative action in admissions practices, took effect, the worst fears of many are being realized. As a large portion of the last class admitted under affirmative action prepares to graduate, organizations that serve underrepresented students calculate how they will react to losing up to half their constituency.

The organizations say they are already struggling to maintain their presence on campus.

Due to a lack of manpower, students dedicated to these organizations are having to sacrifice their academics, social lives and health to keep the groups going. But despite such sacrifices, some of the organizations have already gone extinct.

“We’re kind of like the last of our kind,” said Jose Rodriguez, president of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society.

Today is the last day for admitted students to send in their statement of intent to register at UCLA.

Figures from the UCLA’s Office of Academic Planning and Budget reveal that the American Indian population will lose approximately 37 percent of its members when students who entered UCLA in 1997 graduate.

According to statistics on the past three years’ entering classes, incoming students will only make up for 53 to 67 percent of that loss. The statistics are similar for other underrepresented student populations.

“I definitely see a problem next year,” said Robin Bueno, president of the American Indian Student Association. “We’re losing half our membership – they’re graduating.”

Other organizations, like Pilipinos Undergraduate Law Students Association, African Women’s Collective and Black Business Society have stopped functioning due to the lack of students available to run the organizations.

Despite the decline in potential members, leaders of other groups say their membership has stayed the same or grown since SP-1 went into effect.

“Our campaign to repeal SP-1 and 2 has empowered our community to take up arms to save itself, thus resulting in more participation,” said fourth-year African American studies student and African Student Union member Robert Battles.

Though these organizations say they have maintained the quality and quantity of programs each year, students are working harder.

Students say they regularly dedicate 10 to 20 hours each week toward their organizations. According to Celia Lacayo, president of the Latin American Student Association, leaders of underrepresented student organizations typically have a job, are full-time students, and have other pursuits, such as research and coalition building.

“It’s taking a lot out of student of color leaders,” said Ray Ribaya, who served as Samahang Pilipino president during the 1999-2000 school year.

Leaders say it is difficult to run an organization alone or with only one or two cabinet members.

Students often end up serving multiple leadership roles in underrepresented student organizations, forcing overworked leaders to choose between the organizations they love and their academics, health and social lives, students say.

“We get burned out real fast,” said Bueno said, who was president and retention coordinator of AISA as well as co-director of American Indian Recruitment last year.

Since fewer students are available to run organizations, it’s more difficult to find time to cultivate leadership.

“People who are less prepared end up having to step up,” said Mia Watson, a ’99 alumna who is now director of ASU’s Academic Supports Program.

When LASA’s Cultural Awareness Chair left to study abroad, first-year undeclared student Alexis de la Rocha took her place. De la Rocha said lack of diversity at UCLA compelled her and others to keep these organizations alive.

“There’s a lot more pressure on students of color to sustain the efforts,” said ASU Chair Karren Lane, a fourth-year sociology student. “If it weren’t for them, the organizations wouldn’t exist.”

In addition, new prospective members are often upper-class and less politically active, students said.

“They’ve internalized a lot of distorted information that comes from the media,” said Lacayo, a fifth-year political science student.

LASA members hope to discredit media representations that falsely depict Latinos and other minorities as lazy and at fault for their situation.

LASA has hosted events to inform members about affirmative action and public policy affecting Latinos. Underrepresented student organizations host field trips to impoverished areas of Los Angeles like East L.A. and Watts to demonstrate social inequity.

“Everybody just wants to get good grades now, it’s not about experiencing life,” said Rodriguez, a fourth-year civil engineering student. “Before, (school) felt more like it was a community. You felt like you belonged there.”

Others have seen the influx of white and Asian students into organizations founded to serve underrepresented students, like the Society of Latino Engineers and Scientists.

Organizations that serve underrepresented students also face a changed campus political climate, which they say isn’t as open to learning about other cultures.

“I think that is a direct result of SP-1 and 2 and the passage of Proposition 209,” Ribaya said.

“There is no more need to celebrate diversity or even challenge ourselves to learn about it,” he continued.

Proposition 209 is the ballot initiative that voters passed in 1996 that ended affirmative action statewide.

Many believe SP-1 has transformed the social aspect of student life at UCLA. Traditions among underrepresented communities like “Black Wednesday” have all but disappeared.

According to Battles, Black Wednesday is a long-standing tradition in UCLA’s African American community where students gather on Bruin Walk to bond and network socially and academically.

“It’s very shocking for freshman and second years to see more than 20 black people on the Walk at a time,” said Battles. “My freshman year, this happened on a weekly basis.”

Leaders of underrepresented student organizations agreed the transformation of the campus as a result of SP-1 is hurting the university as a whole.

“Back in the day, there was a sense of openness; now people are just trying to get theirs,” Ribaya said. “The whole university experience is limited.”

Watson noted that the university benefits from lasting contributions of underrepresented students, including such cultural celebrations as Hip Hop Xplosion, and the JazzReggae Festival.

“It’s important to take in different perspectives,” she said.

According to a Daily Bruin article dated Feb. 8, 1993, students, faculty and legislators have been organizing since the early 1980s to institute a diversity requirement in the curriculum. When the issue last surfaced in 1993, Academic Senate members cited the $560,000 needed to create the requirement as the reason it hadn’t been implemented. Instead, they instituted a policy which encourages multicultural content in all courses.

Underrepresented student organizations fill the void that an absence of a diversity requirement has left, students said.

“People need to recognize that student organizations are here not only to provide support for its constituency, but also to provide holistic education to the campus,” Lane said.

“These organizations bring vital information to the campus that augment the mission of the university, so their existence is crucial to the campus, especially in the wake of curriculum that isn’t diverse,” she said.