UC APPLICANTS IN `209' LIMBO : SCHOOLS PLAN IMMEDIATE ENACTMENT IF PROPOSITION APPROVED.

Byline: Sarah Lubma and Laura Kurtzman Knight-Ridder Newspapers

As many as 46,000 high school seniors could find the rules changed even before they finish filling out their application forms for the University of California next month: If voters pass Proposition 209 on Nov. 5, UC campuses will have to drop race from their admissions policies immediately - not in 1998, as administrators have been planning.

``If 209 passes, what we'd do the next day is begin to implement our current admissions policy without consideration of race and gender,'' said UC spokesman Terry Lightfoot.

Proposition 209, also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative, would ban race- and gender-based preferences in public jobs, contracts and university admissions.

UC General Counsel James Holst said he expects to distribute his opinion on what the initiative would mean in a few days. But area guidance counselors said campus admissions officials told them at a Sept. 21 conference in Berkeley that if the ballot measure passes, race no longer will be a factor for students applying for admission next fall.

The uncertainty is making it difficult for students who apply to UC, said Jocelyn Vosburgh, who runs the career center at Leland High School.

``It's crazy,'' she said. ``It's like changing in midstream.''

Although UC has yet to take an official position on the effect of 209, ballot initiatives become law as soon as they are passed, unless they contain language to the contrary, according to a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State's Office.

Asked whether a victory for 209 would mean UC would have to end affirmative action in admissions a year sooner than it had planned, Holst said, ``I think that's the very likely result.''

In 1995, UC regents decided in a bitterly contested vote to drop affirmative action in admissions and hiring. They agreed to put off implementing the new policy until 1998.

The regents' 1998 deadline ``allowed the university time, but 209 does not,'' said Regent Ward Connerly, who also heads the ballot drive against affirmative action. ``It's sudden death.''

There's a possible hitch: if Proposition 209 is challenged in court and a judge decides to postpone the law, UC could continue its current affirmative action policies. But the university still would face the 1998 deadline to drop race- and gender-based affirmative action, Lightfoot said.

The regents' decision already may have affected the current crop of UC applicants. Both UC Berkeley and UCLA, the system's most competitive campuses, reported a sharp increase in the number of freshman applications they received from top-scoring students, Asian students and white students this year compared to 1995.