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Never too far from controversy, the UC Board of Regents is once again debating the polarizing issue of UC admissions – and if the past is any indicator, things could get ugly.

The latest point of contention is whether the current UC admissions scheme, comprehensive review, should undergo an outside audit to ensure that its new admissions criteria are fair, efficient, and in accordance with California state law.

UC Regent Ward Connerly, a proponent of the audit, argues that an independent examination of comprehensive review is the only way to ensure the system’s legitimacy and earn the public’s trust.

He couldn’t be more correct.

Implemented in 2002, comprehensive review, complete with its “life challenges” criteria, could very well be the son of affirmative action. Though it stops short of explicitly equating skin color with admissions clout, the system’s inherent subjectivity provides ample room for racial tinkering and other forms of hanky panky.

Instead of relying on a two-tiered, SAT and grades-based admissions criteria, comprehensive review has placed substantial emphasis on immeasurable “life challenges” like divorce, abuse, poor health and dysfunctional family life. To reward students’ purported trials and tribulations, UC admissions boards are handing out “perseverance points” in heaping spoonfuls, earning the new policy nickname, “sob story sweepstakes.”

Consequently, applicants saddled with a stable family and good health are weighed down by their own good fortune. In addition, students too proud, stoic or optimistic to dwell on past misfortune suffer a similar disadvantage.

But the current question facing the Board of Regents does not involve the saneness of this policy (that battle has already been lost), but rather the impartiality of its application. Coinciding with recent allegations of foul-play by UC applicants, Connerly and Regent John Moores have called for an outside audit to ensure the admissions process does not favor the “life challenges” of some races over others. Such discrimination would violate the 1996 state referendum that banned affirmative action.

There is reason for concern. According to the Wall Street Journal, former UCLA admissions director Rae Lee Siporin stated the new system was invented to “… make the student body as reflective as possible of the state’s population.” She goes on to indicate that the use of poverty as the “disadvantage index” was ditched because it wouldn’t aid middle-class Latinos and blacks and it would “pull in” lots of low income Asians.

Legislator Marco Antonio Firebaugh, a key backer of comprehensive review since its inception, also stated that a poverty index would (gasp) “… yield a lot of poor white kids and poor Asian kids.” In order to avoid such an “offensive” outcome, the new UC admissions policy certainly appears to target the “life experiences” of minorities rather than the collective student body.

According to UC statistics, the number of blacks and Latinos admitted to the University of California under comprehensive review has jumped to 18.5 percent of the total, a level not matched even in the heyday of affirmative action. At the same time the number of admitted Asians and whites has declined.

But in spite of these implications, UC President and diversity crusader Richard Atkinson has indicated that, in the absence of direct evidence proving bias, an outside audit would not be warranted.

In the wake of Proposition 209, this is simply bad policy. While Atkinson may be correct in assuming the propriety of comprehensive review, his good faith is doing little to clear the cloud of suspicion that has hovered over the UC admissions process since comprehensive review took effect.

Simply put, the new admissions policy appears to be an underhanded tactic used to circumvent the will of California voters who passed Proposition 209. And until the UC admissions system achieves at least a degree of transparency, such perceptions will continue to undermine the entire process’ credibility – regardless of their accuracy.

While the cost of an audit would be small relative to the UC budget, its effects would be far reaching. In addition to restoring the confidence of the public in UC admissions, it would improve the implementation and efficiency of comprehensive review itself.

Given the tumult that has accompanied the admissions process for the last decade, the UC Board of Regents should go beyond the pale to ensure a fair and legitimate admissions policy. The board owes it not just to the UC system, but to the students as well.