Oh, you didn't know?

Last, week, college Republicans at the University of California, Berkeley organized a pro-rated bake sale to protest the use of affirmative action in admissions at public universities in California. Currently the practice is not allowed, but there is a state Senate bill before Governor Jerry Brown that would make the consideration of race, gender and ethnicity in making college admission decisions legal.

To demonstrate their disapproval of the bill, the group of students sold baked goods at different prices to different demographic groups, charging White/Caucasian students the most and Native Americans the least. They also gave all women a $.25 discount.

First, this is hardly an original idea. Similar (read: identical) bake sales took place at Bucknell University and the College of William & Mary. There are many reasons to be disappointed in the Cal students here, among them is their lack of originality.

Second, there is reason to be proud of the Berkeley administration. The aforementioned bake sales at Bucknell and William & Mary were shut down by campus officials. Legally, schools can end such demonstrations, even at public institutions*. But if a group of students wants to make complete asses of themselves in a very public manner, I'm in favor of allowing them to experience the full extent of their self-humiliation.

*As long as you can make a reasonable argument that the demonstration distracts from the educational mission of the institution, the school has the legal authority to end the demonstration using without infringing upon any individual's 1st Amendment rights.

Third and finally - more or less - the only things these Cal students proved with their bake sale is how sheltered and out of touch they are with reality. There are numerous comments on the article linked above demonstrating why, but to summarize, these students attempted to demonstrate what they fear will happen if admission officers at their school are able to consider qualities such as race, gender and ethnicity in making admission decisions. The larger point, which eludes them, is that the opposite is true in society and at their school given its current admission policies**.

**UC Berkeley is hardly alone - favoritism for those who already benefit from favoritism is a complex problem within higher education to which the solutions are coming, but coming too slowly.

The students staging the protest think that they're preventing something awful from happening to their school, but the reality is that they're perpetuating an awful reality that exists at their school and elsewhere. America - and really the world - is spreading apart towards the extremes. Middle income is falling into lower income while the upper income continues to separate itself from the rest of us. Whether they know it or not - and I fear some of them do - these Cal students are making an argument in favor of that separation.

Fourth and finally - yeah I lied before - there is reason to approach the pending legislation cautiously. Non-academic information such as race and class are powerful tools in the hands of an admission office - they can also be dangerous tools, but I believe they are necessary tools...

TO BE CONTINUED