2008 Woodie Awards
Cookie stunt serves one-sided agenda
Issue date: 9/28/07 Section: Opinion
- Page 1 of 1
Seven days ago, the College Republicans set up a bake sale in the Coates University Center. They had planned on charging students for cookies based on a price scale delineated by race, a technique used by many university groups to raise awareness of affirmative action and allotting the hosts an opportunity to relay sound-bytes to passers-by. Campus and Community Involvement revoked the group's permission for the exact event at the last minute, though, in an administrative effort to avoid potentially offending students and faculty. The event became a circus and an opportuinity for the Republicans to rail against everything from their stifled right to free speech to the University's coddling of liberals to the racist system they believe Affirmative Action to represent.
On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presented a speech at Columbia University amidst crowds of protesters and counter-protesters. Some students and faculty failed to grasp why the University had extended him a platform on which he stated that no homosexuals exist in Iran and that the occurrence of the Holocaust is debatable. After acknowledging that Ahmadinejad would, like it or not, be a guest of the university, one student told the New York Times that his presence should at least be taken advantage of.
These recent examples show the invaluable nature of speech in a political world where information and ideas are literally circling the globe at the speed of light. What is critical, though, to a more educated and open society is not just speech, but discourse. And that was the problem with the stunt on Friday: there was no opportunity to learn. The College Republicans cancelled the entire concept of the bake sale because they felt like they couldn't get their message across unless they used race, unless they were allowed to potentially "offend" people. There is a fundamental flaw in the logic that the only discourse worth having springs from shock and insult. Words exhanged in heated, passionate arguments are rarely the most thoughtful or the ones that we come back to later and are proud we said.
This bake sale could have been an opportunity to push Trinity students to show that they can confront an uncomfrotable or inncorrect assumption about the world and stand taller for it. The administration underestimated the average student here and their ability to think critically and compassionately. The College Republicans failed to provide any semblence of information, neutral or otherwise, to go along with their firm stance on the racist nature of affirmative action.
There will always be speech you do not agree with. There will always be people who will try to provoke impulisive reactions. The challenge of an education, which should be open to anyone with the determination to get one, is to take knowledge and spread it--among peers, parents, friends and faculty--not to parrot sound-bytes.
On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presented a speech at Columbia University amidst crowds of protesters and counter-protesters. Some students and faculty failed to grasp why the University had extended him a platform on which he stated that no homosexuals exist in Iran and that the occurrence of the Holocaust is debatable. After acknowledging that Ahmadinejad would, like it or not, be a guest of the university, one student told the New York Times that his presence should at least be taken advantage of.
These recent examples show the invaluable nature of speech in a political world where information and ideas are literally circling the globe at the speed of light. What is critical, though, to a more educated and open society is not just speech, but discourse. And that was the problem with the stunt on Friday: there was no opportunity to learn. The College Republicans cancelled the entire concept of the bake sale because they felt like they couldn't get their message across unless they used race, unless they were allowed to potentially "offend" people. There is a fundamental flaw in the logic that the only discourse worth having springs from shock and insult. Words exhanged in heated, passionate arguments are rarely the most thoughtful or the ones that we come back to later and are proud we said.
This bake sale could have been an opportunity to push Trinity students to show that they can confront an uncomfrotable or inncorrect assumption about the world and stand taller for it. The administration underestimated the average student here and their ability to think critically and compassionately. The College Republicans failed to provide any semblence of information, neutral or otherwise, to go along with their firm stance on the racist nature of affirmative action.
There will always be speech you do not agree with. There will always be people who will try to provoke impulisive reactions. The challenge of an education, which should be open to anyone with the determination to get one, is to take knowledge and spread it--among peers, parents, friends and faculty--not to parrot sound-bytes.
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