CA State Senate passed State Constitutional Amendment by 27 to 9 to force UC/CSU to include race as a major factor in admission criteria. Essentially, it discriminates against “over-achieving” Asians and in all probability it is unconstitutional.

The State Senate passed it with a super Majority. It will now be discussed in the Assembly. Current signs are that it will be passed with a super majority there as well. Then it will come to the November ballot, where you can be sure it will pass because it is an off-year election with voter turnout generally low.

Once passed, the bill will limit admission of Asian Americans to UC/CSU. However, if one reads the actual text of the bill passed, it could have adverse repercussions to the K-12 in districts like Cupertino, Saratoga, Palo Alto, Fremont, etc. because the final approved version explicitly struck out the words “post-secondary”. The text of the bill is available at: http://legiscan.com/CA/text/SCA5/2013.

The Chinese American community is actively mobilized but Indian Americans are not. We went to a town hall meeting, Mar. 2, at the Cupertino Community Hall and there were only a handful Indian origin people there. There is a lack of information in the community and this issue needs to be widely publicized. Shouldn’t we care about our kids’ future?

There is only one way to stop it: Write (snail mail), phone or fax your assemblyman to Vote “No” against it.  Apparently, email is ignored as spam. Inform other people and urge them to do the same. The more people who make the effort, the better chance it will not pass the assembly. Fighting it in the courts once it becomes law is a long and uncertain process.  You can find your assemblyman here: http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/.

You can find more info at: http://www.no2sca5.org/.

We urge all readers to consider this a time-sensitive matter that they should address at the earliest.