Race-Based Med School Admissions: The Idiocy and Danger of Cultist DEI Policies

Last week Californians learned that the once-premier UCLA Medical School is admitting students based on race instead of grades and test scores, despite the practice of race-based affirmative action admissions being illegal in California since 1996, according to a report from the Washington Free Beacon. “Up to half of UCLA medical students now fail basic tests of medical competence. Whistleblowers say affirmative action, illegal in California since 1996, is to blame.”

The University of California system, and UCLA continue to employ this practice despite the  United States Supreme Court’s landmark affirmative action ban decision last year, as well as California’s 1996 law barring race considerations in admissions.

Many California residents have known all along that despite the 1996 voter-approved Proposition 209, California’s public education system (private education as well) and public employment, has continued with race-based admissions and hiring preferences.

Proposition 209, a ban on affirmative action and race based preferences, was passed by California voters in 1996, and prohibits discrimination or preferential treatment by the state, public universities, public employment, or other public entities. Proposition 209 added a section to the California Constitution’s Declaration of Rights which only said that the state cannot discriminate against or grant preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, and public contracting, and banned the use of affirmative action involving race-based or sex-based preferences in California.

In 2020, voters even reaffirmed the ban on affirmative action policies and practices by voting down Proposition 16, 57% to 42%.. Prop. 16 qualified for the ballot when ACA 5, authored by then-Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), was passed by the California legislature in 2020. If passed, Prop. 16 would have repealed Proposition 209.

Ironically perhaps, Prop. 209 is based on the exact language of the 1964 U.S. Civil Right Act, which Leftists and Democrats no longer appear to care about.

It’s bad enough if Gender Studies majors are affirmative actions admissions, because every affirmative action admission squeezes out a qualified high school student who met the entrance requirements. But medical school admissions – this is a live or die issue.

Merit-based university admissions are imperative, and for many reasons. Many jobs require rigorous training because to fail would mean the loss of many lives – and not just at the hands of a doctor: Airline pilots, air traffic controllers, law enforcement, many military specialties, scientists… there are more.

The Globe has a contributor who has personal experience with affirmative action, going back to the early 1970’s. Patrick Wagner, M.D. is a retired physician. Here is what he told the Globe:

“I started out my college career in Bakersfield, where I played junior college football.  I was a member of the number one JC football program in the nation, but all of my C average education effort was directed into the game. It was great for discipline, but lousy for the GPA! I ended up with an F on my transcript, in Algebra of all things. In the spring of my second year of college, I got a D plus in geography at the small university I transferred to in San Diego, called United States International University.  Not until spring football when I got my knee destroyed by a cheap shot linebacker, did I wake up and realize that all I really wanted was to be a surgeon. So, I turned on premedical education, and turned into an A student, in some of the toughest classes you can imagine, but loved every minute of it.”

Patrick said he was up against students with 4.0 GPA’s and MCAT’s off the charts, while he had to work extra hard on catching-up his GPA. He said his MCAT was dismal, and cost him “two more years of education at University of Nevada, Reno, with a master’s degree in physical biochemistry (DNA interactions with nordihydroguaiaretic acid in cesium chloride density gradients, searching for answers as to why this small molecule was showing promise as an antineoplastic agent), working directly with the medical school, in order to pass muster.”

He said he was initially totally under qualified – until he worked very hard to make medical school happen. But he saw other students who didn’t work as hard but did get into UCLA, USC, Stanford, Cal, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, among others. His mentor/teacher “literally started sobbing when I told him I didn’t get accepted to med school, so he told me to just hang in there, and he set up my opportunity to go to UNR to get that extra boost and get in.”

“There is no question that my time at USIU demonstrated to my mentor in particular, the poison of affirmative action.”

Patrick’s very hard work paid off and he was accepted to the first four-year medical class in Nevada history at University Nevada Reno, and was “almost top of my class in the national board exams from the first two years of basic science at UNR.  Not bragging, just fact.”

He continues:

“In retrospect, it was affirmative action that softened the astonishing cutthroat atmosphere that was necessary to get into medical school, that I gladly achieved by desire alone. I wouldn’t change that struggle for anything in my life.  It makes everything so worthwhile you can’t believe it.”

The Globe talked with another physician who had a similar path to medical school, playing football, then pivoting to medicine, by way of a Masters Degree. He said the harder a med school student has to work, the better he is a doctor. “And I am glad I didn’t spend four years in the library,” he said.

The Washington Free Beacon continues with UCLA admissions issues:

“Long considered one of the best medical schools in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles’s David Geffen School of Medicine receives as many as 14,000 applications a year. Of those, it accepted just 173 students in the 2023 admissions cycle, a record-low acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. The median matriculant took difficult science courses in college, earned a 3.8 GPA, and scored in the 88th percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT).

Without those stellar stats, some doctors at the school say, students can struggle to keep pace with the demanding curriculum.

In 2021:

.”..a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average—some members of the committee felt that this particular candidate, based on the available evidence, was not the best fit for the top-tier medical school, according to two people present for the committee’s meeting.

Remember, we are talking about medical school which produces surgeons, pediatricians, cancer specialists, and brain surgeons, not Chicano/Chicana Studies or Art History majors.

The Free Beacon reported that the dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, exploded in anger when rebuffed saying, that the candidate’s scores shouldn’t matter, because “we need people like this in the medical school.”

“I wondered,” the admissions official added, “if this applicant had been [a] white male, or [an] Asian female for that matter, [whether] we would have had that much discussion.”

Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a “failed medical school,” said one former member of the admissions staff. “We want racial diversity so badly, we’re willing to cut corners to get it.”

Dr. Patrick Wagner continues:

“It is that cutthroat atmosphere that makes good doctors, white, black, Asian – all good.  Learning, struggling, patience, all of that, make medicine what it is. The UC program is headed by horribly hateful admissions committees, as in all medical schools in America now. They don’t even honor the Hippocratic Oath now.

The economics of present-day medicine is in the gutter, and the consumers of medicine don’t get it.

It’s not race that’s allowing these conniving, America hating monsters to destroy our resolve and resources, it’s systemic racism, discrimination and laziness that is lowering the standard of American education, action, and success. I know it through and through.  You could actually say that I was the victim of affirmative action…a dumb jock that thought he would give pre-med a shot. Well, drive and determination, and love of the prospect of controlling an operating room proved them wrong! There is nothing I want more than for the people of California (and of course America) to have good caring doctors again. That’s my dream. It’s as big a dream as getting accepted to medical school was for me!”

Dr. Wagner says to fix the problems – which are not confined to California but are predominant in California admissions – the very real concept of exceptionalism in every single kid needs to be brought back in education, for kids to first imagine greatness, and then turn the dreams into reality through hard work and diligence.

Dr. Wagner identifies some of the toxicity in education:

“We’ve got to weed out the America haters on admissions committees and replace them with America lovers. The economics of medicine is quite simple. I know. I proved it to myself. So, we have to hone in on education and simple common-sense economics, and then teach it to these amazing folks who aspire to be physicians. I will guarantee you that the monsters who now dominate the wrecking of America will become America lovers once we kick the miserable hate right out of them.”