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Students push for Middle Eastern category at UCs Daily News, 03/31/2009 http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12036729 Several UCLA student groups -- including Arabs, Iranians, Afghanis and Armenians -- have launched a campaign to add a Middle Eastern category, with various subgroups, to the University of California admissions application. They hope to emulate the Asian Pacific Coalition's "Count Me In" campaign, which a few years ago successfully lobbied for the inclusion of 23 ethnic categories on the UC application, including Hmong, Pakistani, Native Hawaiian and Samoan. For years the federal government has classified Arab Americans and Middle Easterners as white. But confusion and disagreement have led some students to check "Asian" or "African," depending on what part of the Middle East they came from. Some simply marked "Other." The UCLA students say having their own ethnic designation goes beyond self-identity and has real implications for the larger Arab and Middle Eastern communities. The "white" label can hurt them with universities and companies that use the information to promote diversity, they say, and can result in the gathering of little or no statistical data on important issues, such as health trends in the community. Voter-approved Proposition 209 bars California's public colleges from considering race in admissions. The Arab American Institute estimates that including Middle Easterners in the white category on the census has led to a population undercount of more than a million, Helen Samhan, who works at the institute, said There are more than 3 million Arabs in the United States, according to the institute.