Affirmative Action Bake Sale at Indiana University

The Hoosier Review ^ | 11-4-03 | Zach Wendling

[Rush Reagan]

Yum! Cookies Well, it's finally come to IU. The Committee for Freedom will be holding an Affirmative Action Bakesale tomorrow, Wednesday, November 4th in Dunn Meadow from 12:30 pm until 2:00 pm. According to the press release, "Cookies will be sold at different prices based on race and gender. White males will pay $1 per cookie, white females will pay 75 cents, Hispanics will pay 50 cents, and cookies will cost 25 cents for blacks."

Stephan Jerabek, President of The Committee for Freedom, said, "Through this bake sale, we hope to highlight the absurdity of preferences based on race, ethnicity, or gender." Bakesale patrons will also be given the chance to sign a petition calling on IU to change university policy to prohibit the collection of racial data.

As a side note here guys there is probably going to be a huge backlash on campus from this. Any support you Freepers can give us in terms of letters to the editor or anything else will be greatly appreciated. I will post a message after the bakesale to tell you guys how to respond if you want.

[wheelgunguru]

What race are they anyway?

It's not a race. It's a personality type. Back in the pioneer days people in Indiana were fond of gang fighting. A tactic was to bite off the ear of the opponent.

After the fighting was over, they'd hold up the bitten-off ears and say, "Hoosh-ear?" They later became known as "Hoosiers."

[Rush Reagan]

Oh ok I know who you are talking about. I have heard stories from my older friends about Preacher Dan. Preacher Dan wasn't hear last year but there was somone just like him saying and doing all the things you talked about. Nothing so far this year though.

[Rush Reagan]

We've already started planning a response to this. Hhehehe

[MonroeDNA]

I love this spreading idea!!!!

[Rush Reagan]

Yea me too! The whole idea is to get as much attention from conservative across Indiana and the nation as we can to try to fight off the liberals here on this one. This place is great for that.

[Chu Gary]

"Not only that, but they invented basketball."

Perhaps some day the folks in Bloomington will discover a sport to play in the Fall, prior to roundball season.

[Flora McDonald]

Best of luck tomorrow. Don't forget to smile, smile, smile no matter what they say to you because the one time you frown, your picture will be taken. LOL.

Stay safe and please post an after action report.

[wheelgunguru]

Perhaps some day the folks in Bloomington will discover a sport to play in the Fall, prior to roundball season.

What? There are no sports other than basketball.

[Shethink13]

You forgot the part where the devil created Hammond and Gary as his own personal theme park.

Hey, watch it! Hammond's my home town!

[Jackie]

Google: Rush Limbaugh real estate tax Palm Beach.

[lizma]

Bean Blossom in the Fall.....

Oh Lordy, I loved Bean Blossom! Bill Monroe and grannies in rocking lawn chairs. (Didn't even know they made rocking lawn chairs til then.) Just fabulous. I suspect my kids are the only kids in Maryland that know the words to Rocky Top.

Yellowwood... 1st and only experience with a rattle that wasn't behind glass. Not totally excited to go back there but should consider Southern Indiana for a road trip next fall. A good friend of my hubby is a conservative IU prof. Thanks for getting my vaca wheels spinning!

[lizma]

Max's favorite hangout was out there between Ballantine (sp?) and Woodburn Halls

I remember Max in the 80's. I'd say he was anywhere from his late forties to early sixties back then. (Sorry, can't pin-point it more than that. I was on my way to class. Organic Chemistry and the cute guy in the next apartment was much more important than some IU color and anything political.)

RR let us know how things go for you tomorrow. We're pulling for you.

[Better Dead Than Red]

I am from the Davis College Republicans at the University of California at Davis. Yeah you probably will get a backlash in the school paper. We did that out here at davis and someone wrote "Racist Pigs" in chalk in front of our table. Stay the course though. The more they get pissed off, the bigger the impact you are making.

[Saundra Duffy]

I love it!

[ppaul]

Will they be selling crackers too?

[ppaul]

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/145305_robert24xx.html

Free speech got burned at bake sale

Friday, October 24, 2003

By ROBERT L. JAMIESON JR.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Those crazy, right-wing college kids -- they're back at it.

The latest hubbub involves an anti-affirmative-action bake sale at the University of Washington.

On Oct. 8, the UW College Republicans decided to spark "a dialogue" about perceived inequities resulting from affirmative action in college admissions and society.

Never mind that voters approved Initiative 200, which virtually wiped out affirmative action in our state.

The campus conservatives put a table outside the student union and sold cookies on a sliding scale: a quarter for Native Americans; 30 cents for African Americans; 35 cents for Latinos; 50 cents for Pacific Islanders; 95 cents for Asian Americans; and a buck for whites.

Jason Chambers, the 22-year-old president of the College Republicans, believed the bake sale would rile people up. Did it ever.

The UW Board of Regents puffed out its chest, firing off a huffy letter Monday.

"The 'statements' of the UW College Republicans in putting on a bake sale about affirmative action were tasteless, divisive and hurtful to many members of the University community," wrote Jerry Grinstein, President of the Board of Regents.

"Learning is not advanced when the dialogue is demeaning and disrespectful," the letter on behalf of the regents went on to say. "We are deeply disappointed that ... the bake sale statement did not embrace the basic value of respect for ... student colleagues and others of the university community."

The campus student paper jumped into the fray.

"If the (Republican group) did not predict outcry from student groups, it must be incredibly naïve," the Daily screamed on its editorial page. "Race has been such a sensitive issue on campus."

OK, everyone. Take a deep breath.

Aren't folks being a little too thin-skinned, too knee-jerking liberal?

I never thought I would be one to say this, but the cabal of college Republicans should be allowed to bake up controversy, even if it's in bad taste.

Free speech is a cornerstone of our society, even stupid speech. The bake sale was a prima facie case of idiocy. There was so little context or content to the sale that made affirmative action out to be some sort of subsidy. Intellectually speaking, the stunt was like cookies -- a light snack when what we need is a full-course meal.

But if you can't have a free exchange of ideas -- no matter how repugnant or objectionable -- on a university campus, then, where can you?

Seattle resident Thomas Merry touched on that point in a letter in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. He was responding to an opinion piece about the ideological climate at universities.

"One would not dare question certain 'truths' in the classroom for fear of being ostracized, vilified," Merry wrote. "An independent-minded renegade chooses instead to bite his tongue rather than face the inevitable wrath of his peers and, worse, his instructor who ought to be facilitating an honest, open dialogue. There is no more dialogue on American campuses."

Chambers, of the College Republicans, agrees. "People are nervous to let their conservative views be known in class," the senior from a small town in Lewis County told me. "They're afraid of being shot down. It's tough."

Problem is, the approach taken by bake-sale organizers doesn't make the going easier. Such tactics divide the campus community and fail to bring people together to talk about a thorny issue.

The College Republicans would be better off holding a forum for the whole campus fostering civil discourse. The tongue-in-cheek bake sale, which has been replicated on other campuses, is bound to lead to misinterpretation -- and did at the UW. A couple of students rushed the bake-sale stand and tore up signs.

The response by university muckety-mucks was heavy-handed, too.

Was the bake sale illegal? Nope. Was it as incendiary as students walking through campus wearing white sheets? Not close. Yet, if you pressed your ear to the Ivory Tower, you'd be left with an impression this was an open-and-shut case of moral reprehensibility.

"Repugnant," Regent Craig Cole thundered to The Daily. "Intentionally divisive."

"It hurt me," Student Regent Darlene Mortel added. "I'm all for free speech ... but there is a very thin line when free speech becomes hateful speech, becomes violent speech."

She's right. The problem is that "thin line" seems to shift arbitrarily.

The College Republicans say a feminist group held a campus bake sale to highlight salary disparities between men and women. But hardly anyone said boo about that. The Daily didn't pen hellfire editorials. The Board of Regents didn't slap wrists.

The PC police never left the station.

Smells like a double standard.

"Parody is part of the American game," Regent William Gates Sr. was quoted as saying. "I will not be party to any sort of board action to criticize what (the College Republicans) did."

And I won't criticize the intent of the College Republicans -- that is, if they were being sincere about bringing serious attention to a hot-button issue. But I will slam them for choosing a method that drowned out their meaning.

If these students want constructive dialogue, they'd do well to bring gravitas to their approach.

Otherwise, they're coming out of the oven half-baked.

---

P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. can be reached at 206-448-8125 or robertjamieson@seattlepi.com

© 1998-2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

[VA_Gentleman]

They did this at the University of Richmond too.

[wordsofearnest]

Also at the University of Southern Indiana about a month ago.

[TontoKowalski]

"It hurt me," Student Regent Darlene Mortel added. "I'm all for free speech ... but there is a very thin line when free speech becomes hateful speech, becomes violent speech."

Darlene, you stupid expletive-deleted, it's a bake sale, not a lynching. I'm guessing that this person is a student, since she's a Student Regent, and if so, she should be expelled immediately for being so stupid.

If she's a University employee, she should be fired for the same reason.

[misterrob]

Good post.

The bake sale idea is generating controversy but is not doing much to spread the real message as in reality, there is no such thing as government pricing discrimination in the market (that I am aware of anyway). What would be better (IMHO) would be to:

Offer people $5 to take a test, minorities are automatically given between 15-25 points before they write their names on their papers.

Start an athletic team and turn away people after you have reached a certain number of your quota. After all, if blacks only make up a certain % of the overall population than they cannot be overly represented in the club. Explain that even though some of the black students are better athletes, you cannot take away opportunities for other students.

Sponsor a debate between minorities and whites/asians. The minorities are allowed to use any language they care to but white students are automatically subjected to sensitivity training or even harsher penalties when the minority side doesn't like their response.

Have a big campus club day and post a sign telling people that Black, hispanic, gay, women and other special interest groups are allowed to attend but that white student clubs are not because of their racist and non-inclusive views.

Post sign-ups for two day-long programs in two different locations. The first option is a black students day event filled with guest speakers to discuss black issues such as civil rights, affirmative action, reparations and racism. The second option will be to have a Conservative Club rally where speakers will come to discuss issues like free speach, affirmative action, quotas and other conservative discussion points. Then go back and measure:

Positive Press for the black students event and the negative press for the conservative one.

The time it takes to have the university cave in on the conservative event.

The amount of times racism is used by minorities and the amount of anti-white comments made at the black students event.