The Sheldon--it's baaack
Gerald Turner, president of Southern Methodist University, has made one of the strongest bids for the Sheldon by allowing subordinates to shut down a student bake sale that mocked the unfairness of race and gender preferences: Identical cookies were offered at different prices for whites, minorities, and women. The director of the student center said the issue wasn't free speech but "a hostile environment being created that was potentially volatile."
Campus satire about affirmative action is greeted in much the same way that jokes about Allah are welcomed by the Taliban. Hostile-environment charges are a traditional campus way of saying "I am offended, so silence those who disagree with me." And if violence is threatened, says University of California-Los Angeles law Prof. Eugene Volokh, a university should respond "by protecting the speakers against the would-be thugs, rather than by shutting up the speakers and letting the thugs win." President Turner, however, declined to intervene, letting the censors win.
The presidents of SMU and Cal Poly are clearly way ahead of their Sheldon-seeking rivals. Since there is little difference between them, the Sheldon judges are awarding two trophies this year. Congratulations to Gerald Turner and Warren Baker, Sheldon laureates of 2003.
advertisement
