We are not suing to reinstate the use of racial criteria. We are suing for a fair and non-discriminatory admissions policy. UC Berkeley junior Genevieve Gonzales said that presenting arguments on a legal level could harvest more effective results. It's one thing to fight on an ideological level. I think that all approaches are necessary and all approaches are to be respected and appreciated.
People fight on different fronts.
The discrimination lawsuit, which specifically targets undergraduate admissions policies at UC Berkeley, could also be designed to serve as a lead for other lawsuits to be filed in the future, Moran said. It may be that for them, this is a test case and they may feel this is in some sense the best test case they have because of Berkeley's competitiveness and because applicants for college come from very disparate circumstances. UC Berkeley was the defendant in another discrimination lawsuit a decade ago when a group of Asian students sued the university, alleging that admissions practices at the Berkeley campus had a disproportionately negative impact on Asian students, according to Charles Ratliff, deputy director of the California Post Secondary Education Commission. In that case, the suit was resolved in favor of the plaintiffs and resulted in the requirement that the university fully disclose its admissions criteria. They had no idea what the criteria were.