Univ. of Colorado Lifts Ban on Conservatives' Bake Sale Protest
by Jim Brown
February 25, 2004
(AgapePress) - Conservative students protesting affirmative action have won free-speech victories at two public universities in the West.The University of Colorado recently dropped its ban on an "affirmative action bake sale" held by the College Republicans. That decision reversed an earlier decision banning the satirical protest in which black and Hispanic students are typically charged less than Asian and white students for the same items.
The school's change of heart came after Denver-based attorney Robert Corry threatened the school with legal action and exposed its double standard.
"The hypocrisy, surprisingly, is that CU itself has been violating these laws for years now in treating students differently and providing them with a separate, two-tracked admissions program, separate scholarships, separate counseling -- even separate graduation ceremonies for students of different races," the attorney says.
Corry explains that CU officials, who were under a lot of pressure from campus minority groups to censor the bake sale, disingenuously claimed the protest staged by the College Republicans violated anti-discrimination laws.
"I can't imagine that CU actually interprets the anti-discrimination laws in that way, because if they did then CU itself would have to look in the mirror and would see hundreds of violations in their own procedures and in their own behaviors of the law," he says.
"I think it was quite clear to everybody involved that CU was just introducing this as a pretext to stop the speech that was critical of CU."
The same day the affirmative action bake sale was held at CU, officials at the University of California at Irvine reluctantly allowed conservative students to hold a similar protest.
