Education Dept. May Extend Review To Other Colleges and Universities

After years of prodding from Capitol Hill and the national education community, the U.S. Department of Education this week announced the results of admissions policy reviews at both Harvard and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Both schools were alleged to have set quotas in their acceptance of Asian American students.

On Monday, one graduate department out of the 84 reviewed at UCLA was faulted for discrimination, according to Department of Education spokeperson Paul H. Wood.

And yesterday, the Department's Office of Civil Rights announced that Harvard College was in full compliance with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin in institutions which receive federal funds, according to a letter of finding delivered to President Derek C. Bok.

Though the Education Department has yet to find the widespread discrimination expected by several Asian-American lobby groups, there is speculation that the inquiry into discriminatory admissions practices may spread to other universities.

Reports on UCLA's undergraduate programs and the law school at UC Berkeley are expected in the next several months, Wood said.

"We've illustrated allegations of discrimination are taken very seriously by this agency and this administration," Michael Williams, the department's assistant secretary for civil rights said to The New York Times on Tuesday. "We anticipate expanding our compliance review activity."

Wood said yesterday that Williams' quote was intended only as a general statement about the Department's interests in following up on all complaints of discrimination. "We investigate every complaint if there is merit," Wood said. "If someone runs out tomorrow and says `I was discriminated against' we would investigate and check out the merits."

"I was sitting in the room when [Williams] said [that the compliance reviews would be expanded] and he was taken out of context," Wood said.

But an aide to Sen. Paul Simon (D-III.) said yesterday that more schools will be examined.

"We're pretty confident that they'll cover other schools," said John Trasvina '80, general counsel to Simon.

Trasvina said that complaints had already been received about Stanford and Yale and that acting on those complaints necessarily involves closely examining those schools' admissions policies.

Simon has yet to issue a statement about the Harvard and UCLA reports, but he is pleased that fruits of the slow paced investigation are finally being reaped, Trasvina said.

And aides to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), an outspoken critic of the investigation, expressed similar sentiments yesterday, saying that these results have been long in coming.

Frustrated by the pace of inquiry, Rohrabacher launched his own investigation into Asian American discrimination last October. He discontinued the effort when it met with unfavorable response from critics.

Wood called the compliance reviews of Harvard, UCLA and Berkeley "the most complicated undertaking" ever for the Office of Civil Rights at the Education Department.