Racist bake sales and freedom of speech

When someone says the word “bake sale,” it brings to my mind images of bake sales during elementary school at which parents would dutifully bake brownies, cupcakes and cookies to support the initiatives of the parent-teacher association. What doesn’t come to mind are political protests and minority rights issues.

However, far, far away from Princeton in the bastion of liberals called University of California, Berkeley, a bake sale being run by the College Republican group on campus has morphed into the hot controversial news topic of the week. Why? Well, the College Republicans at Berkeley decided they didn’t like the legislation in the California congress regarding affirmative action. So as many students at Berkeley regularly do in a spectacular fashion, they decided to make a political protest. They decided to have a bake sale where people weren’t charged for baked goodies based on the type of food or its weight, but instead based on the customer’s race.

So basically, they have a sliding scale of what you pay for an item based on your race. White men pay $2.00, Asian men $1.50, Hispanic men $1.00, black men $.75 and Native Americans $.25. As a woman, you get a quarter knocked off of your race’s price. The point of this bake sale is pretty clear. The College Republicans are theorizing (in a rather politically incorrect way) that with the new affirmative action legislation, prospective students of a certain race, say, Hispanics, will be able to get into college much more easily than, say, a prospective student with the same accomplishments who is, for example, white. Although this was a creative way to make their point, the lack of tact and political correctness with which they chose to make it turned the little bake sale into a hotly debated national news topic.

Most of the controversy surrounds not only the topic of affirmative action but also the manner in which these particular students chose to express their displeasure with it. Most people agree that the College Republicans had a right to express their opinion of the aforementioned legislation. But did they go too far to make a point? Precedent and public outcry say yes. Similar bake sales that were planned at other collegiate institutions including Bucknell, William & Mary and Southern Methodist University were shut down by school officials before they ever started. However, others have pointed out that, despite its crudeness and racism, the bake sale was basically a political protest and students have a right to do it.

So there are definitely two clearly defined sides to this issue. What interested me, however, coming fresh off a discussion about free speech in my politics class, were the implications an event like this could have on the notion of free speech on a college campus.

For the last 50 years, college students have had a lengthy history of protesting the norm and popular opinion. College campuses are generally regarded as place where anyone can make a point about anything. However, the controversy over this bake sale shows that this fact might no longer be the case. Instead, it seems that the example this bake sale is setting is that student groups shouldn’t be allowed to express an opinion in a controversial and non-politically correct way.

But this brings up a whole other potentially more serious issue. By restricting the manner in which student groups can express their opinions, their right to expression is being compromised. After all, these groups weren’t demonstrating their point about affirmative action with violence, threats or scare tactics. They were just holding a bake sale. So when does halting an event like this stop being about the particular political issue and start being more about freedom of speech? This is an old issue that has been revisited numerous times since students started protesting the Vietnam War 50 years ago. Just because students choose to protest and express a controversial opinion in a politically incorrect way doesn’t mean that they should be stopped from expressing this opinion peacefully. In that way, it ultimately doesn’t even matter what the issue the students are protesting. What’s more important is their freedom of speech.

At this point, it becomes interesting to wonder about what would happen if this scenario were to play out in the Orange Bubble. Would Princeton go with the precedent that other collegiate institutions have set and shut down the event before it even began, or would the school follow in Berkeley’s steps and allow the event to go on in honor of freedom of expression? Seeing as the University has been slightly conservative in its decisions on a few controversial events to come to campus, I would say the event would be challenged by the University at the least. Then again, I also can’t see the typical well-informed Princetonian quietly submitting to a clear restriction of freedom of speech. So ultimately, the outcome of the scenario could go either way, as have the real-world outcomes of similar controversial events on other campuses.

So that’s why the implications of this bake sale could be much farther-reaching than stirring up discussion of affirmative action legislation. It also touches on the right of free speech on college campuses and the cases in which it is permissible to compromise that right. Perhaps there should be cases in which freedom of expression is limited and maybe there shouldn’t be. Either way, it’s clear that this is an issue that won’t be going away anytime soon.

Kelsey Zimmerman is a comparative literature major from Glen Allen, Va. She can be reached at kzimmerm@princeton.edu.