[The Volokh Conspiracy] SMU shuts down anti-affirmative-action bake sale:

[Eugene Volokh]

According to the Associated Press, Southern Methodist University officials shut down a bake sale today in which cookies were offered for sale at different prices, depending on the race and gender of the buyer. The sale was organized by the Young Conservatives of Texas, who said it was intended as a protest of affirmative action. A sign said white males had to pay $1 for a cookie. The price was 75 cents for white women, 50 cents for Hispanics and 25 cents for blacks. Members of the conservative group said they meant no offense and were only trying to exercise their freedom of speech to protest the use of race or gender as a factor in college admissions. . . . A black student filed a complaint with SMU, saying the sale was offensive. SMU officials said they halted the event after 45 minutes because it created a potentially unsafe situation for students. "This was not an issue about free speech," Tim Moore, director of the Hughes-Trigg Student Center, said in a story for Thursday's edition of The Dallas Morning News. "It was really an issue where we had a hostile environment being created that was potentially volatile." The sale drew a crowd of students outside the student center and several engaged in a shouting match, Moore said. David C. Rushing, 23, a second-year law student and chairman of Young Conservatives of Texas at SMU and for the state, said the event didn't get out of hand. At most, a dozen students gathered around the table of cookies and Rice Krispie treats, he said. . . .      SMU is a private university, and is thus not bound by the First Amendment. But I think that they, like other private universities, should nonetheless tolerate and support a wide range of speech by students -- and if they don't, then the public should know that they really aren't committed to academic freedom.      In particular, it seems to me that a university should deal with threatened violence against speakers -- if that's the "potentially volatile" situation and "unsafe situation" they're describing -- by protecting the speakers against the would-be thugs, rather than by shutting up the speakers and letting the thugs win. And a university that takes the side of the would-be attackers against students who are expressing their viewpoints (and doing so peacefully and calmly, if provocatively) deserves to be condemned.      Alternatively, perhaps the university wasn't worried about violence as such, but about people being offended -- that's what the phrase "hostile environment" (and its legal synonym, "offensive environment") often refers to. But that simply highlights that this is "an issue about free speech": Is SMU the sort of place where students are free to express their political views on one of the leading ethical, legal, and political issues of the day? Or is this the sort of place where complaints that ideas are "offensive" are enough to shut those ideas down? If it's the latter, then SMU might be a place where classes are taught -- but it's not my idea of what a modern university should be.      Disclaimer: As always, this post is based on the facts as I have read them, here in an AP story. If there are other important facts that the story misses (and there often are), please let me know. Thanks to readers Jim Killion and Ted Warfield for the pointer. -- Posted by Eugene Volokh to The Volokh Conspiracy at 9/25/2003 11:16:53 AM Powered by Blogger Pro