Southern Methodist University halts race-based bake sale

The sign said white males had to pay $1 for a cookie. White women: 75 cents. Hispanics: 50 cents. Blacks: a quarter.\nThe event Tuesday at Southern Methodist University was no PTA bake sale. \nIt was a conservative student group's attempt at making a political statement, and it caused such a stir that SMU shut it down after 45 minutes.\nThe Young Conservatives of Texas chapter ran its so-called affirmative action bake sale to protest the use of race or gender as a factor in college admissions. Conservative groups have held similar sales at colleges around the country since February.\nGroup leaders say they were only making a point while exercising their freedom of speech, but a black student who filed a discrimination complaint with SMU said the bake sale was offensive. SMU officials said they halted the event because it created a potentially unsafe situation for students.\n"This was not an issue about free speech," said Tim Moore, director of the Hughes-Trigg Student Center. "It was really an issue where we had a hostile environment being created that was potentially volatile."\nDuring the bake sale, students were crowding around the table outside the student center, and several began to get into a shouting match, Moore said. \nDavid C. Rushing, a second-year SMU law student and leader of the conservatives' group, said the event didn't get out of hand and that at the most, a dozen students gathered around the table of sugar and chocolate chip cookies and Rice Krispie treats. \n"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," said Rushing, chairman of Young Conservatives of Texas at SMU and for the state.\nChapters of the group held similar bake sales at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University this month. Both schools allowed the events, citing free speech policies.\nRushing, 23, said the events strive to give students a sense of the inequality he says is created by unequal college admissions policies for whites and minority groups. \nMatt Houston, a sophomore, said the group's sign, which listed prices for the treats by the race and sex of buyers, was not a learning tool.\n"My reaction was disgust because of the ignorance of some SMU students," Houston said, 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"