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  Matthew Knee Knee awaits your comments at mknee@media.ucla.edu. Click Here for more articles by Matthew Knee

The UC is constantly struggling to properly define equality-related problems such as institutional racism, heterocentrism, empowerment and other choice bits of academic babble. With so much focus on solving the big issues, it’s surprising that so little attention is given to smaller issues of equality – those that are easier to fix.

One example is the university’s failure to acknowledge the inherent flaws of departmental placement tests and to accept SAT II scores, in addition to Advanced Placement scores, for foreign language placement. The foreign language departments still use their placement tests and Advanced Placement tests, which are as much-maligned as they are inequitable.

UC administrators have been heaping praise upon the SAT II, and have increased its role in the admissions process. They should take this one step further and allow SAT IIs to be used for foreign language placement. The SAT II foreign language exams are intended to be taken after three to four levels of instruction in a foreign language, which translates well to the three-level language requirement of UCLA.

SAT IIs would provide students another alternative for placement because some schools don’t offer Advanced Placement courses at all, let alone language courses with limited appeal. However, everyone must take SAT II tests in order to apply to the UCs, but only students from high schools fortunate enough to have numerous Advanced Placement exams have the opportunity to place out of foreign language requirements without taking a departmental exam.

Even in the rare case of high schools that offer every Advanced Placement exam, an inequality exists concerning which languages are tested. The Advanced Placement exams only test mastery in four languages – all European in origin – while the SAT II tests nine, including some common Eastern languages. Thus, it is possible to exempt oneself from the foreign language requirements with an Advanced Placement test for your native language, but only if you happen to speak Spanish, German, French, or, if you happen to be the motherless, fatherless, autochthonous, immaculately conceived offspring of the Pope, Latin. In fact, few public schools offer Latin anyway.

Accepting the SAT II test will also provide equality for those who speak Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Hebrew at home, or for those who have mastered them by some other means.

Incorporating these diverse languages is important because foreign language placement tests don’t account for when a student studies a language. Not everyone takes language courses during their ninth through 12th grades. And those who do usually see their ability to speak the languages decrease in quality over the summer, relative to those who took their Advanced Placement and SAT II tests in May, at the height of their learning period.

Those who learn their language early, say, starting in middle school and finishing early in high school, are at a severe disadvantage when they take the placement tests during orientation. In fact, many languages the SAT II covers (and the Advanced Placement tests do not) tend to be learned earlier in life, such as during after-school programs.

This proposed change in the use of the SAT IIs is not a far-fetched concept and it is not unprecedented. UCLA already uses SAT IIs for placements in areas other than foreign language. For instance, the university uses SAT IIs for the English Subject A requirement, the Quantitative Reasoning requirement and the American History and Institutions requirement.

Other prestigious universities like Stanford and University of Pennsylvania, already accept SAT IIs for language placement requirements.

The inadequate handling of the foreign language requirement is an issue of equity that is both concrete and easily reparable. No financial investment, no divisive rhetoric, no angry, impassioned speeches, no protests, no new vocabulary required. Rather, a simple change in administrative procedure can go a long way in helping to promote equity and improve the lives of the student body as a whole.