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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
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