The US Department of Education has forwarded a report suggesting that public universities retool their racial statistics data to allow for the selection of a “multi-racial option. From the Daily Cal:

Currently, college students can select only one of five racial categories: black, white, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander and Native American/Alaskan Native. If a student selects multiple ethnicities, only one is counted when the school reports racial statistics to the federal government.

Although some colleges have reworked their forms to let students check multiple boxes for their own internal records, such institutions still use the traditional system when reporting data to the government.

It is unclear how many students have marked multiple categories in past years. More than 6.8 million respondents picked more than one racial category in the 2000 U.S. Census, according to census statistics.

The new system of multiracial identity reporting would also ask students whether they are Latino or Hispanic and divide the Asian/Pacific Islander category into two distinct groups.

Though the idea of including a physical “multiracial” check box drew heavy criticism when proposed by former UC regent Ward Connerly in 2004, some UC officials say they support allowing students to check multiple racial categories.

“I think the idea of accurately representing one’s racial heritage and identity strikes me as a good idea,” said P. David Pearson, dean of the Graduate School of Education. “Having students identify with a multiracial box would be more accurate in representing our students’ races.”

A UC spokesperson declined to comment on the new proposal.

But Yvette Felarca (editor’s note: didn’t she graduate?), director of the local chapter of civil rights group By Any Means Necessary, said the new proposal sounded constructive.

“We support students being able to self-identify with their race as long as it’s specific and it can make campuses accountable for the demographic makeup of their student body,” Felarca said.

When Yvette Felarca, the Daily Cal, and the federal government agree on anything, generally CalStuff needs to disagree. simply for reasons of consistency.

Let’s be frank: if the university is going to truly reflect upon and study “racial diversity”, then it needs to stop using simplistic terms like “white”, “asian”, and “multiracial”, that tell us little to nothing about the students on this campus. Instead of using yet another encompassing term, I’d rather see there be twenty detailed options rather than six, and the option to check as many boxes as deemed fit. At least that way we’d be able to see exactly how multi-racial this campus actually is.