Frequently Asked Questions
What is SARD?
SARD is Students Against Racial Discrimination, an unincorporated association of students, parents, academics, and citizens who are concerned about the University of California’s unwillingness to abide by state and federal laws that prohibit racial discrimination.
How many members does SARD have?
SARD currently has twenty-four members; we expect that our membership will grow in the wake of filing its lawsuit against the University.
What evidence do you have that UC engages in racial discrimination in admissions?
Please refer to our complaint, which provides a good deal of documentation.
What are the objectives of the lawsuit?
We are asking a federal judge to enjoin the University from engaging in discrimination and to appoint a monitor to review UC admissions activities for some period in the future. We also hope that the litigation will lead to the disclosure of data and information that the University has made a practice of hiding for the past fifteen years.
What would you say to critics who will say your suit is racially divisive?
There is abundant evidence that underrepresented minorities benefited when the University of California was reasonably compliant with Prop 209, during the first decade after Prop 209’s passage in 1996. During that period, as several academics have documented, Black and Hispanic applications and admissions rose and graduation rates soared. We believe that the University ignored this evidence and reintroduced illegal racial preferences during the late 2000s and 2010s to virtue-signal rather than to advance legitimate educational goals. All groups will benefit from a race-neutral University.
In this connection, it is worth remembering that the California legislature, by an overwhelming majority, voted in 2020 to put a measure on the November 2020 ballot – Proposition 16 – which would have effectively repealed Proposition 209. UC leaders enthusiastically supported Prop 16, but California voters rejected Prop 16 by a 58-42 majority, and importantly, the Prop 16 vote was much less racially polarized than was the 1996 vote on Prop 209 (for example, a majority of Hispanic voters opposed Prop 16). We think this illustrates the very broad disapproval of racial preferences by Californians, and the degree to which many state officials and university leaders are out of touch with general public sentiment.
Is SARD related to Students for Fair Admissions (“SFFA”), the group led by Edward Blum that served as the plaintiff in the admissions lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina?
No, there is no formal or informal connection between SARD and SFFA. However, SARD is following SFFA’s example in using an organization, rather than a class of individual students, as the plaintiff in the lawsuit. This helps to solve a standing problem in such suits; the litigation may go last for a number of years, and any specific student may lose “standing” to sue the university if that student matriculates at another university. SARD, like SFFA, will recruit new members who are harmed by UC’s discriminatory practices as other members “age out.”