Southern Methodist cancels group's race-based bake sale
by Linda Wertheimer Dallas Morning News

   (KRT) The sign said white males had to pay $1 for a cookie. White women: 75 cents. Hispanics: 50 cents. Blacks: a quarter.
   The event Tuesday at Southern Methodist University was no PTA bake sale.
   It was a conservative student group-s attempt to make a political statement, and it caused such a stir SMU shut it down after 45 minutes.
   The 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.
   Group 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.
   "This was not an issue about free speech," Tim Moore, director of the Hughes-Trigg Student Center, said. "It was really an issue where we had a hostile environment being created that was potentially volatile."
   During the bake sale, students were crowding around the table outside the student center, and several began to get into a shouting match, Moore said.
   David 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 treats.
   "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.
    Chapters of the group held similar bake sales at the UT-Austin and Texas A&M University this month. Both schools allowed the events, citing free speech policies.
   SMU students organizing the event said they meant no offense.
   For the record, the SMU sale was a flop, at least financially. The group ended up selling just three cookies, raising $1.50.