Group to hold anti-affirmative action bake sale on campus

The Committee for Freedom, a new student activist group, will hold an anti-affirmative action bake sale from 12:30 to 2 p.m. today in Dunn Meadow.\nStephan Jerabek, president of the Committee for Freedom, said to illustrate the problems with affirmative action, cookies will be sold at different prices based on race and gender. White males will pay $1 per cookie, white females will pay 75 cents, Hispanics will pay 50 cents and cookies will cost 25 cents for blacks.\n"It's kind of unique and it attracts attention to the issue itself," Jerabek said. "It illustrates more clearly the problems with affirmative action."\nAt the same time, Committee for Freedom will begin a petition to persuade IU to ban the collection of racial data, particularly in the admissions and hiring processes.\nAs they purchase their cookies, students will be able to sign a petition to convince IU administrators to change University policy to prohibit the collection of racial data. The Committee for Freedom will then launch a larger campaign for signatures to show that IU students stand for equality and against affirmative action, Jerabek said.\n"We think that using race as an identifier is demeaning," he said. "People aren't treated equally in any system that uses race as a determining factor in hiring or admissions."\nThe IU Office of Affirmative Action could not be reached for comment.\nSimilar bake sales have been held at colleges across the country, such as University of California-Berkeley, University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, Northwestern University and University of Washington-Seattle.\nIn September, Southern Methodist University had a race-based bake sale shut down by its administration. A black student, who filed a discrimination complaint with SMU, said the bake sale was offensive. SMU officials said they stopped the sale 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 in The Dallas Morning News. "It was really an issue where we had a hostile environment being created that was potentially volatile."\nWhether or not IU will shut down the bake sale is yet to be determined, Jerabek said.\n"We'll just have to wait and see."\nFor more information on the bake sale, e-mail Jerabek at sjerabek@indiana.edu.