I apoligize if this has already been posted. For some reason, I can't get the search option on here to work (I will accept tutelage, lol). Associated Press DALLAS - Southern Methodist University officials shut down a bake sale Wednesday 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. Similar sales have been held at U.S. colleges since February. 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 today'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. "We copied what's been done at multiple campuses around the country to illustrate our opinion of affirmative action and how we think it's unfair," he said. Chapters of the group held similar bake sales at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University earlier this month. In both cases, the schools allowed the events, citing university free speech policies. Matt Houston, a 19-year-old sophomore, called the group's price list offensive. "My reaction was disgust because of the ignorance of some SMU students," said Houston, who is black. "They were arguing that affirmative action was solely based on race. It's not based on race. It's based on bringing a diverse community to a certain organization." The group sold three cookies during its protest, raising $1.50. Minority enrollment among SMU's 10,000-member student body is 19 percent. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled universities could use race as a factor in admissions under limited conditions. The ruling changes the landscape in Texas, where universities have been banned from using race as a factor since a 1996 decision by a lower court. The bake sales date back to early February when one was held by the Bruin Republicans group at the University of California, Los Angeles. College Republican chapters at the University of California-Berkeley, the University of New Mexico, the University of Richmond in Virginia, the University of Michigan, Northwestern University and Illinois State University followed suit.
They should have agreed to a program whereby they would have shared a percentage of their profits with minorities. Just ask Les.
I don't understand what has happened over time to the goals of many groups. In the 1950's the NAACP wanted race eliminated from all applications, ballots and any form of identification. Now they are against a proposition doing that?? I don't understand why people can't just be accepted to school based on merits. That is the determinant of whether someone should be accepted to a school or not. I'm not white, but I would not want some leftover spot that I didn't deserve to make the school look more like a racial rainbow.
I dont get what all the fuss about...I'm sayin 25cent for a cookie is a good deal....hell, a brotha off tha street would come hussle these fools out all dey cookies at 25cent and go set up shop across tha way sellin em to da man for fitty cent
this reminds me of the Seinfeld episode at the bakery...where he talks about the black and white cookie...and how they come together to make one great cookie. "look to the cookie, elaine."
Admission to school based on merits?!?!?!! You racist pig, you! How dare you say something like that!
You can argue the merits of AA all you want, but when you do it this way, it makes one look racist. If those against AA don't want to be labeled as racist, they should disavow these horrible activities.
Race shouldn't get one into school, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking everything in life is about merit. As an intern in a college admissions office, I saw first hand that, people also get into schools because of who they know or who they are. Our office admitted kids because of who their parents are--are they contributors, alumns, famous, powerful; and who their parents knew--are they friends of the Dean or President. My children have a better chance of attending my Alma Mater because I am an alumn. They are pretty much already admitted. President Bush had a golden path charted through Yale due to his father. My point is that while race based Affirmative Action admissions quota systems are wrong, non-race based Affirmative Action addmissions systems are wrong too. Just eliminating racial preferences won't equate to merit. Then we've got to intervene on those other forms of "getting over" that mostly benefit wealthier kids.
Why can't college admissions eliminate AA and legacy programs, and replace them with an economic affirmative action? One that depends only on the economic background of the applicant? Poor blacks get help instead of middle-class or upper-class that would get in anyway and you aren't excluding poor white people.
I also think a class/income based system is the best way to go. If the point is to help economically disadvantaged people access opportunity, then poor whites gotta get help too.
That would be the sweet way to handle it, I would pay a bunch of black dudes from inner city dallas to go buy a bunch of cookies and then sell them to white students for 75 cents; however, this could never happen, as they probably wouldn't make it past Campus Security, even though we live in a "color blind" society.
In the US, it's illegal to offer different prices for the same good at the same place, I believe (as opposed to the bartering system that happens in so many other countries) - with a few exceptions such as cars for some reason. Perhaps it's only for storefront establishments, but assuming not, these groups should be charged with fraud or whatever the proper term would be in this case.
...what a fantastic analogy, Major -- thanks for sharing. I wonder *why* it is illegal to offer different prices for the same good... maybe because it's discriminatory! That sounds strikingly familiar to the affirmative action policy! Kudos to these SMU students for standing up to the racial bullies who shout down every valid argument against them on the grounds of 'being racist'. The recipients of AA should be ashamed for receiving something that they did not earn.
Asked and so answered: the history of the Robinson Pattman act is below, but IIRC, you should know that it was originally passed in order to protect small grocery stores from A&P: The Robinson-Patman Act A. General Principles The history of the Robinson-Patman Act actually begins in 1914, when section 2 of the Clayton Act became the first federal statute that expressly prohibited certain forms of price discrimination. In 1936, section 2 of the Clayton Act was amended by the Robinson-Patman Act, and it became a far more complex statute.(2) It is important to consider the context in which the amendments were adopted. In 1936, Congress believed that large firms could dominate markets through predation and other forms of economic warfare directed against smaller firms, and felt that "power buyers" such as large retailers could use their market power to extract price concessions from manufacturers and other sellers that were unavailable to their smaller competitors. As the Commission has stated, [t]he major legislative purpose behind the Robinson-Patman Act was to provide some measure of protection to small independent retailers and their independent suppliers from what was thought to be unfair competition from vertically integrated, multi-location chain stores.(3) Consistent with the context in which the Robinson-Patman Act was created, the Supreme Court and the Commission have concluded that the Act is based on one fundamental principle: to assure, to the extent reasonably practicable, that businessmen at the same functional level would stand on equal competitive footing so far as price is concerned.(4) To that end, reduced to their essentials without their exceptions -- and provided that a number of jurisdictional requirements are satisfied -- section 2(a) of the Act requires sellers to sell to everyone at the same price, while section 2(f) of the Act requires buyers with the requisite knowledge to buy from a particular seller at the same price as everyone else. Sections 2(c), 2(d), and 2(e) -- as elaborated by the Commission through the FTC Act -- prohibit sellers and buyers from using brokerage, allowances, and services to accomplish indirectly what sections 2(a) and 2(f) directly prohibit. Interpretation and elaboration of these basic principles are of course crucially important, because maximizing consumer welfare and economic efficiency in a free market economy necessarily means that different firms perform differently. In my view, our objective therefore should be to interpret the Robinson-Patman Act in as economically sensible a fashion as possible. The Supreme Court has on several occasions stated that the Act must be interpreted consistently with the "broader policies of the antitrust laws."(5) For example, the Court has warned against interpretations of the Robinson-Patman Act which "extend beyond the prohibitions of the Act and, in so doing, help give rise to a price uniformity and rigidity in open conflict with the purposes of other antitrust legislation. . . ."(6) Similarly, the Commission has concluded that [t]he interpretation and application of the Act should be consistent with the interpretation and application of the other antitrust laws whenever possible.(7) The best way to effectuate this objective is to interpret the Act so as to emphasize the prohibition of discriminatory practices that injure or threaten to injure competition. The Supreme Court has in the past stated that the Act prohibits price discrimination that creates a "reasonable possibility that a price difference may harm competition."(8) In its most recent decision interpreting the Act -- Brooke Group Ltd. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation -- the Court confirmed that y its terms, the Robinson-Patman Act condemns price discrimination only to the extent that it threatens to injure competition. . . . Congress did not intend to outlaw price differences that result from or further the forces of competition.(9) Of course, effects on individual competitors frequently can be of evidentiary value in conducting investigations and prosecuting cases under the Act. Moreover, the Act itself contains a number of defenses -- in particular, the meeting competition and cost justification defenses -- that help to make it more consistent with the maximization of consumer welfare and economic efficiency.(10 Bad assumption =
