There is only one Puerto Rican registered in the entire University of California system. There are no Mexican Americans among the freshman classes of medical school at either the University of California at San Diego or the University of California at Irvine. These admission numbers have implications for the delivery of health care services to underserved communities. It has been shown time and time again, that it is primarily persons of color who will return to provide medical services for these communities. We condemn these underserved communities to remain underserved when we do not provide admission to qualified applicants who have as their goal to provide health care services to these communities.
Conventional wisdom says that as California goes, so goes the rest of the country.
I ardently advise my colleagues to learn from the mistakes of my home state. I hope that in this case, that conventional wisdom is wrong.