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End of an era Until 1973, the admissions director at Berkeley had a fairly easy task: to accept those who were eligible for the campus. Over the past 25 years, and especially in the last 15, that process has changed dramatically. Berkeley is now the most selective public university in the country, and the director of admissions has become the lightning rod for storms of protest-from tens of thousands of disappointed individuals as well as from groups of every stripe. Bob Laird has watched the culture of Berkeley admissions change enormously since he came to the campus as an outreach officer in 1977. He was named director in 1993 and has held that pressure-packed position with passion and integrity. This fall, Laird jolted the Berkeley community by announcing his retirement, effective November 15. Born in north Oakland 60 years ago, the 6-foot 3-inch Laird went to Oakland City College before transferring, with a basketball scholarship, to UC Santa Barbara. His plans for a coaching career were interrupted by his discovery of literature, which propelled him to graduate school in English. But he soon realized, he says, that he wasn't a scholar, he just loved literature. Laird has three unpublished novels in his drawer which he hopes to work on in his retirement; he also plans a book on his six years as admissions director at Cal. Affirmative action was already under attack in the early 1990s, when Laird applied for the director's job. "I really wanted to be in the fight--right in the middle of the fight," he recalls. He got the job, and the fight, including battles over the vote by the UC Board of Regents in 1995 to ban admissions officers from considering race, ethnicity, and gender in selecting students, and then the state vote a year later in favor of Proposition 209, which outlawed affirmative action. Laird has had to balance his own strong commitment to diversity with these institutional bans. Asked what he is most proud of during his tenure, he says: "Having been part of a group of people who succeeded in building an extraordinary degree of racial and ethnic diversity prior to 209. I think it was unprecedented, and I believe that people across the country have looked to Berkeley not only as the practical leader in that effort, but also as the moral leader. That's a very powerful thing for me." In the fall of 1998, when the first Berkeley class following the rulings against affirmative action was announced, there was a media frenzy. The drop in minority admissions led supporters of affirmative action to attack Berkeley's admissions efforts. Earlier this year, civil rights groups filed a lawsuit against the University, alleging deliberate racial discrimination against African American, Latino, and Filipino students. This clearly pained Laird. "It was an extraordinary wrenching of the landscape," he says. "In the lawsuit, the values of most of the people who work in the admissions office are exactly aligned with the values of those civil rights organizations bringing suit. Some of us have been friends with some of those attorneys; we've worked together on programs, been on panels together. And then, suddenly, to be adversaries in a very high-stakes federal lawsuit, was tough, very tough." So tough that Laird decided to leave. "I love this job, and it's been a tremendous honor to have been able to serve as the director of admissions at Berkeley--I'm kind of amazed that it happened to me," he says. "But I can really feel the toll of the job, the cumulative effects of the stress, and I need to think about the future of my family." As he left in November, Laird was presented with the campus's highest award, the Berkeley Citation, and the City of Berkeley proclaimed November 5 Robert Laird Day. Chancellor Berdahl said: "Berkeley could not have asked for a more dedicated, more talented, nor more principles person to direct the undergraduate admissions process, especially through the very difficult times following Proposition 209. Berkeley is going to miss him, and so am I. Invariably, after any conversation I had with Bob I was more certain than ever that students applying to Berkeley were receiving the most comprehensive and impeccably fair evaluations one could hope to provide." --Russell Schoch -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exit an activist More in sorrow than in anger, one of Berkeley's brightest young stars is calling it quits. Dismayed at Cal's shrinking diversity, 40-year-old Pedro Noguera will cross the country next fall to teach at Harvard. As a parade of students dropped by his Tolman Hall office, the associate professor of education tried to explain why he is leaving a place he has spent the last 18 years of his life. Noguera, who grew up in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood, earned a bachelor's at Brown and a doctorate at Cal. In 1989, the new-minted Ph.D. found himself in great demand. He had tenure-track offers from Yale, Tufts, and the New School for Social Research; he was even invited to join New York mayor David Dinkins's staff. "All of that was intriguing," he says, "but then I got offered a job at Berkeley." Deciding to stay was easy, he says. Noguera's family--he now has four children--was settled here, and he knew Cal very well. He played rugby here, chaired the Graduate Assembly for two years, was ASUC president in 1985, and served as an assistant to vice chancellor Dan Boggan. "Berkeley also had a diverse student population," he says, "which none of those other universities had. To me, the slogan of 'diversity and excellence' really meant something." In 1990, Noguera started putting his ideas about education into practice by joining the Berkeley School Board--a time-consuming task he took on shortly after being hired. "A lot of people told me it was a dumb thing to do," he says. "But I felt it was important to help the schools in what they do. And I learned a great deal from doing it." Noguera's research focuses on the gaps in achievement that typically manifest along racial and class lines. He left the board in 1994, but remains involved; this semester, he is teaching a 9th-grade English class at Berkeley High. Noguera's nine years on the Cal faculty have been very satisfying, he says. "I have thrived here, and my work has thrived." In 1996, San Francisco Focus magazine named him one of the Bay Area's "under-40 rising stars", the same year he published his book on Grenada, The Imperatives of Power. In 1997, he won a Distinguished Teaching Award. But Noguera also began to feel Berkeley was changing, as it attracted fewer minority students and faculty. "Look at graduate admissions before Proposition 209," he says. "Except for a few departments, enrollment of minority students was already very low. Now, there's much less chance that's going to change." Nor does he see much hope for diversity in the faculty. "The faculty decides who gets into grad school and who gets hired here," he says, "and they pick people who are a lot like themselves." Racial or class preference--or just preference for people that faculty members have a lot in common with--ends up reproducing the existing character of the University, he says. As word of Noguera's departure spread, some writers to the Daily Cal criticized him for heading to the most elite university in the country. Says Noguera: "Berkeley and Harvard are both elite, but at least Harvard reaches out to kids like me, who come from inner-city environments. Even though Harvard primarily serves the children of the rich, it also lets in some from the working class." He notes that the entering undergraduate class at Harvard is 8 percent African-American; at Berkeley, it's 4 percent. Noguera feels sad about leaving, but the longtime activist thinks it is time to move on. "Berkeley seems to be losing its interest in the outside world," says Noguera. "Maybe it's a reflection of the times, or maybe we're attracting students who are more concerned with getting good grades than making a difference in society. But it's not the kind of place it was." --William Rodarmor |
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