n In one of the more annoying and unthought “outbursts” in the last day, the associate city editor of The Daily Free Press wrote a disturbing perspective (“Affirmative action bake sale icing on the cake,” Feb. 23, pg. 9) about the Boston University College Republicans and their affirmative action bake sale.
In a supreme act of hubris, the writer had the gall to call the bake sale “an assault on affirmative action.” The intention of the BU College Republicans was “to raise debate with humor” and “to increase awareness of affirmative action.”
In the words of our esteemed authority, Clynton Namuo: “People often see affirmative action as denying white people opportunities in favor of less-qualified minorities. That is a complete misconception that needs to be clarified.” Damn right, it does. The only good reason to have affirmative action is to give people a chance to get on even footing. Y’know, that whole triumph over adversity?
Mr. Namuo was absolutely correct when he suggested that “affirmative action has been twisted to be something that it is not.” His subsequent statement, that the “College Republicans obviously did not look at affirmative action or social inequality as a whole,” fails to consider the announced intentions of the bake sale.
More to the point, he seems to have failed to consider the possibility that the bake sale was in response to the type of alteration that he mentions. In fact, the sale had its roots in a recent altogether absurd incident with a gentleman of South African descent. I would suggest that Mr. Namuo do research about more than statistics. Perhaps, he could even pick up a copy of The New York Times, a prestigious paper that discussed the very incident.
On a final note, I find Mr. Namuo’s overall response to the bake sale offensive to the extreme. As a journalist, he should damn well know better than to have knee-jerk reactions such as calling for the expulsion or suspension of the club’s leadership. By the same token, we could go ahead and call for the same sanctions upon Namuo himself. They went out of their way to try to debate a difficult and obviously volatile subject. Congratulations, let’s penalize them! Why not turn it around and penalize this guy who got offended?
By the way, there’s this wonderful thing called freedom of speech. I think it lets people make their voices heard. I could be wrong, though. Throwing out the bits about ivory towers and gangs and large families is really a way to garner sympathy. So if I were to say … oh … that I have 10 brothers and sisters and that I’m a minority, I could claim that people “simply do not understand” and I could get away with it. Hell, I could set it up as a magical barrier against responsibility. Nope – looks like the lack of straight As is still my fault.
Good thing affirmative action is helping me pay for school.
Max Considine
CAS ’05
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
