David Copley: Trying to stimulate some debate

Visitors to Locust Walk last Monday may have been surprised to witness a highly unusual bake sale. At this bake sale, students were charged different prices based on their race and gender, with a low of 50 cents for black and Hispanic women to a high of $1.50 for white men and Asians. The event was sponsored by the Penn College Republicans, including myself.

So what triggered this bizarre price structure?

No doubt some would argue that it was not exactly the most "politically correct" of moves. In fact, at UCLA, a similar bake sale had triggered strong protest from liberal students on campus.

I was in for a shock. Here in Philadelphia, the majority of students who approached us at the bake sale expressed their support for what we were doing.

But maybe I should not have been completely surprised. Recent opinion polls about affirmative action suggest that the silent majority of college students are opposed to racial preferences in hiring and admissions.

For example, in last week's New York Times, Stanley Rothman, professor emeritus of government at Smith College, revealed the results of his comprehensive nationwide study of affirmative action policies. He found that "85 percent of students specifically reject the use of racial or ethnic preferences -- along with a majority of faculty members. More telling, 62 percent of minority students oppose relaxing standards, and 71 percent oppose preferences."

Despite the national trend, there appear to be no voices of dissent here at Penn when it comes to affirmative action.

Last month, for example, the Undergraduate Assembly voted to unanimously support affirmative action policies. Based on its track record, I didn't think members of the UA could unanimously agree on what color paper to print their meeting agenda. Unanimous agreement on a highly unpopular subject like affirmative action should have been out of the question.

I was even more confused because I know a number of students on the board who are personally opposed to affirmative action. Many of them chose to abstain from the vote, and some even voted in favor, out of fear of appearing racist.

There is no question racial issues are highly sensitive. But that's no excuse for not standing up on principle against a policy that flies in the face of our Constitution and our basic American values.

In the absence of meaningful forums of debate, the College Republicans felt a bake sale would provide a safe environment in which to stimulate informal discourse.

As we munched on delicious cookies and brownies, two main arguments surfaced in favor of affirmative action.

First, preferences are needed to "level the playing field" and provide opportunity to students who otherwise wouldn't have it.

I agree, which is why I support programs like school vouchers to take inner-city kids out of the failing public schools that have been keeping them down. But there are poor kids of all colors in America, and all of them need to be helped. Programs to provide opportunity should be based on need, not skin color.

The second argument generally used to push for preferential treatment in admissions is the need for diversity on campus. Again I agree, and I believe very strongly in the importance of college campuses maintaining a student body with a diversity of ideas, opinions, backgrounds and experiences in order to foster the sharing of ideas.

But I wonder whether the hard-line proponents of affirmative action, many of whom went to Washington last Tuesday to express their viewpoint, are truly motivated by the need for intellectual diversity. I've never heard any of them requesting that Penn make an effort to hire more politically conservative professors. A recent poll by the Luntz Research Company found that only 3 percent of Ivy League professors consider themselves to be Republicans. That's a shame, as debate groups like PennForum often have a hard time finding professors to offer a conservative viewpoint on important issues.

Which brings me back to the "Affirmative Action Bake Sale." Sure, it was a dramatic oversimplification of a complex issue. But the bake sale itself was not meant to provide a detailed analysis. That's what debates, research papers and forums are for. Sometimes, it takes a highly visible, dramatic oversimplification to surface the real issues. Based on the UA's unanimous vote, it was obviously a tactic that was desperately needed.

David Copley is a Wharton sophomore concentrating in Real Estate and Finance from Bellevue, Wash.

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