Cookie cutter ideas

It sounded like a bad sketch comedy routine.\nWednesday in Dunn Meadow, three politically minded chaps decided to make a funny. They stood behind a brown church-basement folding table with a single plastic container of Kroger brand chocolate chip cookies. Armed with a few pieces of paper and a dream, they held a bake sale.\nEach cookie sold for a dollar.\n... Unless you were a woman. Then you paid 75 cents.\n... Or an American Indian. Then you paid 50 cents.\n... Or if you were black. Then you only had to pay a quarter. \n"It spits in the face of diversity," senior David Bowman said.\n"In my opinion, it's racist," said senior Eric Williams. \nBut was the intent of this bake sale to stir hate, or to stir debate?\nWhile swapping questions, critiques and pseudo-answers with a group of students who were less than pleased with the sale, Alex Gude -- one of the three responsible for the event -- offered this defense:\n"Isn't it absurd that this is how society treats you?"\nTo which a student answered, "Yes."\n"That's our point; this is absurd!" Gude said.\nAnd amidst the challenges for resolutions to the problem of race, one student makes an unnerving observation.\n"You want to know why there's no white people out here?" senior Matthew Booker said. "Because race is not an issue to them."\nIs it? If he was wrong, perhaps we'd have seen a representative difference in the crowd of protestors. On a campus where the minority student population consists of a mere 11.7 percent, surely a number of white students who felt similarly could have amassed, either for or against those at the bake sale. However, this wasn't the case. It was one of the few times that I could count all of the white people around me on one hand.\nHowever, be it protest, political statement or simply the sale of baked goods, people were talking. \nDoctoral student Venetta Farily noted that at the very least, perhaps that's a good thing.\n"It's informing people that this issue (of affirmative action) is alive and well," she said. "But omitting privilege and dismissing ethnicity and culture is not the answer."\nThe sparks, they be a-flyin'.\nWere these guys poking fun at affirmative action or at race? There seemed to be a bit of confusion. So much so that some suggested a better way to address these issues would have been to hold a forum or to pass out fliers.\nYeah, right.\nI think we all know your average college student doesn't care about fliers and forums. \nBut they do like cookies.\nWas the bake sale offensive? Yes. Does it make light of a very touchy issue? Yes. Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. \nIn our America, it's not news unless we think that someone might get hurt. We stay out of abortion debates until we hear about clinic bombings. We stay out of international relations until someone flies an airplane into a skyscraper. We stay out of discussions about race until we see three naive white boys attempt to make a joke of affirmative action.\nThe higher-minded intellectual crowd answers to events such as these with wise and patient advice. \n"Before us lies a learning opportunity. The dialogue has begun. Now, we can move forward toward a better day."\nWe swallow that grayscale dribble like it was Olympian nectar. It offers us the opportunity to "speak out" against racial tension without ever fixing anything. When, in reality, we know we're going nowhere fast.\nI'm with senior Sirri Bonu. \n"I will hold up your sign if you can give me a solution to ending racism," she said. "It's never going to happen."\nThat might not be a happy thought, but at least it's the truth.