mmunity where there is no organized opposition cannot be salvaged, many believe, theoutlook for affirmative action is bleak. "If Beverly Hills can't make this work, nobody can make it work," said Wanda Greene-Hill, who is fighting to save theprogram. "I think people look to Beverly Hills to set an example in a lot of ways. If they see a program fail here, they'll start towonder why they should keep one in their own community." The Multi-Cultural Transfer Program, established in 1969, lets approximately 30 minority students from 11 feeder schoolsoutside the district into the high school's freshman class every year. Applicants are required to fill out a questionnaire thatinquires not only about race but also grade-point average, extracurricular activities, and personality. "This isn't based on factors like entitlements and set-asides," said Darrell Smith, a black business executive who has had twosons in the program. "It isn't solely based on skin color. It's based on performance. "It's a separation from the theory we know of as affirmative action, [and that separation] is good. I didn't want my kids involvedin something that wasn't based on merit." Nor did Greene-Hill, a member of the initial 1969 class, and her former classmate and now husband, Maurice Hill. That's whytheir daughter, Erin, is a participant, and their son, Christopher, was expecting to enroll next year. But when she went to get theenrollment forms for her children in March, she was shocked to learn that the program had been disbanded. Greene-Hill was aware that in early 1999, the Beverly Hills school board asked the district lawyer to evaluate the program inthe wake of Proposition 209, a 1996 California initiative prohibiting state and local affirmative-action plans in education. Sheinsists school officials had told her not to worry, that the Beverly Hills program would be "rewritten, restructured and retitled . .. whatever it took to keep it." But the project was being ...
