A good while ago reader Ross Nordeen brought to my attention a nice column by Robyn Blumner, a thoughtful liberal (or perhaps former liberal) columnist for the St. Petersburg Times, which I discussed here and here. Now he, and she, have done it again.
Yesterday she had a delightful column, “On Campus, Free Speech Causes Indigestion,” skewering the heavy-handed responses of politically correct college administrators across the country to the spate of anti-affirmative action bake sales that have popped up all over the place. She makes a nice contrast that I hadn’t seen before:
These reactions are in stark contrast to how college administrators react to the “pay equity” bake sales organized by student chapters of the Feminist Majority Foundation. The premise is precisely the same: Cookies and other baked goods are sold at differing prices based on the sex of the customer – $1 for men and 80 cents for women. The point here is to raise awareness of the gender wage gap.
Crystal Lander, director of campus programs for the Feminist Majority Foundation, says their bake sales have been “well received” at the more than a dozen schools where they have been held. None has been shut down. In many cases, Lander says, “they have the backing of the women’s studies program.”
Use satire to illustrate a politically popular position and whole departments rush to your aid; use it to poke fun at affirmative action, the sacred cow of academia, and college officials use every pretext to make it go away.
I guess it just depends on which way the cookie crumbles.
