(D)angerous (E)xclusion of (I)ntelligence)
It was only a matter of time until the woke ridiculousness of DEI created danger in everyone’s life. It has already begun infiltrating the airline industry, and now it has serious ramifications at a leading medical school where future doctors should be trained.
The David Geffen Medical School, located at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), has strongly prioritized race over proficiency in its admissions. The results have been disastrous.
The David Geffen School of Medicine, a beacon of excellence in the state and the country, has seen a troubling decline in the quality of education in recent years. This decline has been attributed to the actions of the Dean of Admissions, Jennifer Lucero. Administrators have noted a significant drop in student performance, with an unprecedented number of enrolled students failing to pass basic medical exams and struggling to keep up with the coursework.
Since the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in college admissions in Summer 2022, serious allegations have been leveled against Lucero, who assumed the role of dean of admissions in 2020. Her colleagues have accused her of placing diversity above merit. Despite California's longstanding prohibition on considering race in admissions to public schools, she has allegedly found ways to favor certain groups, even if they fall short of the requirements.
The Washington Free Beacon reported on an incident that demonstrates Lucero's thinking. In November 2021, a Black candidate applied to UCLA with test scores and grades well below the average. The admissions committee disagreed and argued that the candidate wasn't a good fit.
Lucero, however, reprimanded the committee. "Did you not know that African American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?" Lucero said.
Lucero then argued that low grades and test scores shouldn’t matter too much, adding, “We need people like this in medical school.”
Let that reasoning sink in. According to Lucero, because African American women are dying at a high rate, she believes that there needs to be more black admissions. Yet, if they don’t possess the same abilities, how would that help the death rate? Lucero plans to flood the market with inadequate medical students; her only reasoning is that they are a certain race.
One former admissions staff member told the Washington Free Beacon that Lucero has facilitated the transformation of UCLA into a "failed medical school," suggesting, "We want racial diversity so badly, we're willing to cut corners to get it."
According to the source, many individuals familiar with the situation stated that Lucero often accepts black and Latino applicants with lower scores while only admitting white and Asian applicants with exceptionally impressive qualifications. Denying these applicants would cause significant concern and draw attention to her actions.
Since Lucero was hired, UCLA has dropped from 6th to 18th place in the US News & World Report's medical research rankings, and between 2019 and 2022, the number of Asian students declined by nearly a third.
"We are not consistent in the way we apply the metrics to these applicants," one official wrote in an email to another committee member in response to Lucero’s comments.
"I wondered if this applicant had been a white male, or an Asian female for that matter, would we have had that much discussion," the official stated.
Several university officials spoke with the outlet, saying Lucero "cut corners" to achieve racial diversity. "I have students on their rotation who don’t know anything," one admissions committee member said. "People get in, and they struggle."
The situation is so bad that another UCLA faculty member said, "I wouldn't normally talk to a reporter. But there's no way to stop this without embarrassing the medical school."
The "Shelf test" results have fallen in recent years. The test, typically taken at the end of a clinical rotation, measures basic medical knowledge. More than 50 percent of students now fail emergency, family, internal medicine, and pediatrics tests.
The report states that these tests are typically taken at the end of clinical rotations and are crucial for residency applications. Nationally, the average fail rate for these tests is 5 percent. However, since 2020, data from the Washington Free Beacon shows that the failure rates at UCLA have increased tenfold in several subjects.
One professor described an operating room incident in which a student could not identify a major artery when asked. The professor said the student became angry and yelled, stating she had been put on the spot.
Another professor mentioned that by the end of their clinical rotations, some students could not present patients and lacked knowledge of basic lab tests.
"I don't know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors," the professor explained. "Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students."
"UCLA still produces some very good graduates," one professor told the Free Beacon, "but a third to a half of the medical school is incredibly unqualified."
While UCLA has remained Mum on the subject, Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) took aim at the practice of bringing DEI into medicine. He told Campus Reform:
For her part, Lucero is still unbelievably arrogant and continues to try to justify her illegal and failing tactics. Despite the poor results of her plan, she suggests that graduating classes should “represent the diversity” of California. Those who work with her have also confided that she does not like any challenges to her course of action.
This is a clear-cut example of a woke leftist ignoring the truth and pushing an unattainable agenda. Lucero needs to be fired immediately. She should have been gone years ago. She is singlehandedly eliminating the necessary goal of pursuing excellence in medicine.
Wake up, UCLA, and send Lucero packing.
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