nullThis spring, when the Supreme Court revisits the landmark 1978 Bakke case in lawsuits brought by the University of Michigan, supporters and opponents of affirmative action will no doubt take a hard look at UC Berkeley. Seven years ago, the state's voters banned the doyen of our educational system from using race as a factor in admissions. Did the campus resegregate as predicted? Did the sky fall in on the liberal ideal of diversity for diversity's sake?

Many on campus say yes. They point to the precipitous drop in African American students—55 percent down from 1997 levels—and Latinos on campus as evidence that Proposition 209 made Cal unfriendly to diversity. This camp has pushed to pump up those numbers "by any means necessary," in the parlance of one group. Including favoring "brown" students—black, Latino, and Native American—over white or Asian American candidates who have superior test scores.

That's banned, but anyone familiar with the twists and turns of admissions knows that for better or worse, it still covertly happens. One policy, for instance, favors low-income and other "hardship" cases. But "between the Korean kid who scores a 1,400 on his SATs and grew up with the same hardship as a Latina from East L.A. with only 1,150, the Latina will get in," says John McWhorter, an African American associate professor of linguistics. Likewise, Cal has put millions into outreach that sends students back into their communities as recruiters or mentors. But even these substantial efforts target brown students—often middle-class ones—over poor youth from other underrepresented groups (Southeast Asian, for instance). Nonetheless, blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans, who comprise 40 percent of state public high school graduates, still make up only 16 percent of those admitted to Cal.

Yet after years of protest, not many on campus seem to care anymore. About social conditions that produce such depressing numbers. Or the cost to white and Asian applicants. Or fairer approaches UC might try. Some combination of survivor's guilt, issue fatigue, and Cal's PC atmosphere have made honest discourse rare. "On campus, everyone is for, for, for affirmative action," says Sopheary Khlok, a junior. "People don't speak up, because you'd look like a racist."

That's too bad. Because Cal, even as it resists shedding old notions of diversity, is destined to build a striking new version. Already it enrolls more low-income students than nearly any other top university. And its Asian Americans—now 42 percent of students—vary widely in class, culture, and language. Why not debate how to make this diversity more dynamic, while still plotting how to crash barriers that keep others out?

If the justices act against race preference, watch for activists to mobilize on U.S. campuses to defend it. Stakes are high: access to where young people train for power. But Cal's example offers fair warning. Defending just that one answer to

a confounding social dynamic can exhaust the very energy for social change prodiversity forces want to unleash.

Additional reporting by Elisa Huang