Minority Enrollment Continues to Drop at California Medical Schools
OAKLAND, Calif. — University of California officials have appointed a task force to investigate why minority enrollment is dropping at the system's five medical schools.
In 1993, 103 Black and Mexican American students enrolled at University of California medical schools. This fall, the total was 59. That is a 43 percent drop, something university officials want explained — and reversed.
"The continuing decline in enrollment of underrepresented students is particularly disturbing in view of the increasing diversity of the state and the university's prior record in this area," task force chairman Cornelius Hopper said in a written statement.
The university's five medical schools enrolled 569 first-year students this fall. A total of 196 admissions offers were made to underrepresented minority students, a 30 percent increase over the 151 admissions offers made last year. However, acceptances dropped to 63 from last year's 72, a decline of 12.5 percent.
The university considers Blacks, Mexican Americans, American Indians and Puerto Ricans as underrepresented minorities. The breakdown for this year's class is 36 Mexican Americans, 23 Blacks, three Puerto Ricans and one American Indian.
School officials say data prepared by the American Association of Medical Colleges show that as recently as the early 1990s, four of the university system's five medical schools ranked within the top eight medical schools nationally in terms of underrepresented minority graduates.
The decrease comes three years after affirmative action was repealed in the system's graduate admissions, a decision later repeated statewide with passage of Proposition 209. The proposition forbids considering race or gender in all public education.

Grambling Finds Lost Financial Records
GRAMBLING, La. — Grambling State University financial records believed to have been lost in the switch to a new computer system now have been found, and the university hopes to deliver a financial report to the legislative auditor soon, a university spokesman says.
In an unrelated development, a federal bankruptcy judge has set a December deadline for filing claims against  Grambling's foundation, raising the possibility that the organization's bankruptcy filing could be resolved by the end of the year.
In a letter last month, state Legislative Auditor Dan Kyle said the records for the fiscal year that ended in June were lost because the university staff did not know how to support or maintain the computer system installed in 1998.
The records either were deleted or could not be restored to their original format, and the university had been unable to prove that its bank accounts were balanced for the entire fiscal year.
Kyle also said his office still had not received financial statements for the fiscal year that were due on Sept. 1.
"It was our goal to try to meet a date," Dr.  Steve A. Favors, Grambling's president, says. "But we discovered it was impossible to do it without a comptroller."
Thelma Jones, the university's former comptroller, left to take a job in Baton Rouge earlier this year. The former vice president for finance, Melvin Davis, also left the university recently.
Kyle said that his staff would not resume the audit until someone at Grambling was available on a daily basis to answer questions.
Meanwhile, bankruptcy Judge Henley Hunter has issued an order informing people and businesses that claim they are owed money university's foundation they have until Dec. 15 to become part of the case. The foundation filed filed for bankruptcy protection June 18. The case likely will be settled in late December or early January, according to bankruptcy attorney Barry Kuperman.
Court records revealed in June that Grambling's foundation, which mainly raises scholarship money, had assets of $556,900 and liabilities of $187,023. The 30-year-old organization has operated independent of the university since the early 1990s.
Russell LeDay, special assistant to the university president in matters regarding the bankruptcy, says Grambling will consider establishing another foundation.
Meanwhile, 13 Grambling students will get their scholarships funded even though the foundation is in bankruptcy. The scholarships total about $7,000, LeDay says.