On Thursday October 6, 2011, UC Berkeley’s Undergraduate Political Science Association (UPSA) held a one and a half hour panel discussion on Affirmative Action and SB 185. The panel speakers were: Shawn Lewis (Berkeley College Republicans-BCR), Andre Louis (Students for Liberty-SFL), Marco Amaral (La Raza), Glynn Custred (co-author of Proposition 209), Ronald Cruz (attorney for By Any Means Necessary-BAMN), Ruben Elias Canedo Sanchez (Student Life Advising Services/Educational Opportunity Program Research Coordinator).

This forum was the first following the bake sale in hopes of creating a nonpartisan event (which would allow for the discussion of race considerations in California Public University). Campus groups including Black Student Union (BSU), La Raza, and Movimiento Estudiantil Chican de Aztlán (MEChA), By Any MeanNecessary (BAMN), Cal Dems, and even the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) wanted the Berkeley College Republicans to discuss the issue of race in affirmative action in a more “constructive” and less “offensive” manner.

However, when push came to shove, the forum was a huge let down. The vast majority of attendees were associated with Students for Liberty and the Berkeley College Republicans themselves. It begs the question: If so many groups found our methods to be so offensive and had hoped that we would have constructive dialogue, why did none of them show up? The same people that criticized our methods failed to attend the discussion they hoped we would hold instead.
But of course, the answer is plain and simple. They are not interested in dialogue which does not come as a surprise. The BCR executive board and board of directors have long known the problem with the left which is that they are willing to do everything short of answering the hard questions. That is why we decided to hold a bake sale.
Forums allowing for discussion are too “progressive” and we knew from the beginning that these student groups would not show up. UPSA has held forums in the past regarding sensitive issues such as American intervention in Libya and the left did not bother to attend. On the other hand, BCR members have actively shown support for open dialogue. About 15-20 members have regularly shown up to forum discussions. BCR hoped to create campus dialogue and we have done our part–Don’t UC our side of the argument? ■

UC Berkeley students are brought together to discuss the issue of affirmative action and free speech because of the bake sale.

Stepping onto the battlefield that was Upper Sproul Plaza one could not escape the sight. From the dozens of protestors wearing black shirts, laying down right in front of the steps of Sproul, to the commotion and media attention that surrounded the Berkeley College Republicans table, there was not a sight to be missed.

For the past week, since the Facebook event went viral, the Increase Diversity Bake Sale had been receiving an onslaught of attention, at both the school and national level. Everywhere you looked in the days leading up to the event, people were constantly asking for each other’s opinion on an issue that was hardly talked about before the commotion.

The main driving point of the event was to raise awareness. Present people with the facts and allow them to make their own decisions. BCR never said that other people’s opinions were wrong, they just raised their own.

The driving force behind Proposition 209 and its approval in 1996 was that judging admissions decisions based on race is inherently racist. Treating people different based on ethnicity, gender, or religious beliefs define racism.

Those who did not support the bake sale were not turned away. They were not shunned for their ideals. The members of BCR were more than happy to have educated discussions with students and members of the community who wanted to be more informed or even to vocally challenge the event.

Sometimes in order to get an educated discussion going, you have to stir up the pot. You have to challenge the status quo and make the people react. The Increase Diversity Bake Sale was a success for the main reason that it caused people to draw attention to an issue that would have gone unheard had it not been for the bake sale.

On September 19, 2011 at 11:28pm I wrote three words that would change my life and the lives of several other people for several weeks to come, and perhaps even longer. No, it wasn’t “I love you.” The three words were, “Bake sale anyone?”

The forum was an internal Berkeley College Republicans Executive Board Facebook group and the occasion was an ASUC sponsored phone bank the following week in favor of Senate Bill 185. Over the summer, a few members of the board had noticed this bill working through the legislature under the radar. At the same time, we were trying to think of some activism ideas for the upcoming school year. Remembering the affirmative action bake sales held at campuses around the nation (including Berkeley) in the early 2000s we thought we might do something similar for this bill, which would allow the University of California and California State University systems to once again consider race in admissions.  We briefly talked about the idea and agreed to consider it if the bill reached the governor’s desk.  We then forgot about it and didn’t bring it up again, even after the bill indeed was sent to the governor in early September.

That is until the ASUC decided to have their phone bank.  I received a Facebook invitation asking me to make phone calls on Sproul plaza the next Tuesday in support of the bill (no doubt the administrator of that event now regrets not filtering his invites).   This inspired me to post the aforementioned message on the BCR board Facebook group.  We then discussed the idea at our weekly board meeting the following night.  In a discussion that didn’t last more than five minutes, everyone in the room – including, by the way, multiple female and minority students – decided to support the event.  The only concern raised was that because affirmative action was such an old issue, it wouldn’t be timely. This was refuted by noting that the bill on the governor’s desk made the issue very timely, and so we moved forward.

At the time, we had no idea what we had just set into motion. Most of that board meeting was spent discussing not the bake sale, but BCR’s objection to an ASUC senate bill recognizing the “indirect” victims of 9/11, essentially condemning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Patriot Act.  If anything was going to get us attention that week, we thought it would be our attendance at the senate meeting to oppose that bill. As for the bake sale, we wanted to just distract people from the phone bank, get some nice photos for our scrapbook, and maybe (just maybe) get an article in the Daily Cal to raise awareness about SB 185.

At our meeting that Thursday, we announced the event to our general membership. Again, it was a brief announcement; we didn’t even think it would be the biggest event of the week. At around the same time, our communications director posted the now infamous Facebook event page.  Thinking that we would have to work hard to create attention for the event, we went home and posted the event on our walls and invited all of our friends. Then we got ready to have a perfectly normal Thursday evening.

About an hour after the end of the meeting, we received promotion of the event from a very unexpected source, a former ‘progressive’ member of the ASUC Senate.  He also posted a link to the event page, but his tone was somewhat different than ours. “I’m sorry, this is not funny to me,” he wrote, “Berkeley College Republicans have you lost your minds?” From there, the hate snowball began. Individuals began to post negative comments on our event page wall (some of which you can see in throughout the pages of this issue). At first we tried to respond but the number of comments was so overwhelming we could not keep up. A short time later, our president Shawn Lewis made the call to just stop responding in the hopes that it would soon die down.

By about midnight, it was clear that was not going to happen. The event continued to be reposted by students and non-students alike. Reaction was nearly uniformly negative.  We decided to call an extraordinary conference call of the executive board at 1:30am.  In a call that lasted nearly two hours, we debated how to best address the situation.  Some board members argued that we should cancel the event while others said that we must forge ahead lest it look like we cowered under pressure. I have never heard such emotional conversation from my fellow board members.  We were genuinely concerned that we had made a huge mistake and that the club would be branded as racist. Ultimately, we compromised and decided that the event would go forward with a changed event description that better represented our message and clearly explained its satirical point.  We also made what would ultimately be a critical decision – we would respond to every media inquiry.  Whatever we thought of the event initially, the fact was that it was out in the public eye and we could either own it or hide and leave ourselves to the mercy of the media.  I finally went to sleep around 4:30; it was a very uneasy rest.

The next morning I woke up to a number of text and Facebook messages from people I consider friends questioning the event. Most didn’t agree with us, some quite pointedly. I silently wept. I have spent several years building a reputation as a republican who could get along and be respected by those with differing views.  I thought I had managed to throw that away in about twelve hours.

I then left for a prescheduled trip back home to Sacramento to visit my family.  On the ride there, I received word that The Daily Cal had published a story on the bake sale, the first of hundreds. Shortly thereafter I heard ABC 7 had called and was interviewing Shawn. At that point, I knew this was going to be a big deal.  For the sake of not alarming my family, however, I tried to go about my normal life as well as possible. I told them about the bake sale, but only casually.

After a weekend of advising and keeping updated from afar, I knew it was time to head back to Berkeley on Sunday morning. Shawn had just been on CNN twice in twelve hours. He asked me to return for a special ASUC Senate meeting since I was the person who knew the most about the ASUC.  I knew he was right, so I reluctantly packed my bags and headed back to Berkeley a day early.  On the train ride back, I overheard two people talking about the bake sale.

The Senate meeting turned out to be a turning point in public reaction to the bake sale. Supporters of BCR came out in force while our opponents were few and off message. An African American woman, Marilyn Singleton, approached the podium and was immediately given snaps (Berkeley’s version of applause) by the other side on the assumption she would support Affirmative Action. She didn’t. She was there to defend the bake sale. After her speech, you could have heard a pen drop in the meeting. While the Senate passed its predetermined resolution condemning the bake sale, although not by name, the media coverage that night made it clear we had won.

The next 36 hours or so before the bake sale were hectic ones. Because Shawn was inundated with interview requests, myself and other board members began to handle some of them. I appeared on KGO’s Ronn Owens Show, KQED Forum, Larry Elder, The Armstrong and Getty Show, and a number of other programs (the last of which is the most listened to talk show in Sacramento, which made me a virtual celebrity back home. Even my dentist called to congratulate me – and remind me to brush and floss).  I also managed to write a paper that was due the next day. I got a B, very good under the circumstances.

The bake sale itself was a whirlwind of activity; I don’t actually remember that much of it.  I gave nonstop interviews for the first two hours of the event with everyone from the CSU East Bay newspaper to Reuters, basically saying the same thing over and over again.  I also had a lot of discussions with people who disagreed, some civil and some not so civil but none violent. At one point I looked up and noticed helicopters hovering. Never in a million years had I anticipated that a bake sale would merit OJ Simpson like chopper coverage.  CNN broadcast portions of the event live, as did every major television station in the Bay Area. That night, it was the third story on ABC’s World News, following a story about missing Libyan missiles. It was the most incredible event I had ever been a part of.

Within a couple of days, life got back to some sense of normalcy. Wednesday afternoon, I attended my first class in six days. I caught up on all the other things in my life that I had neglected for a week. By the weekend, things were relatively back to normal, though with significantly more life experience than before. Friends who had at first misunderstood the purpose of the event and sent me those messages the first night at least understood what we were trying to do and that even if the event was intentionally racist, we were not. Some even came to support our message.

On October 8, Governor Brown vetoed SB 185. We might never know whether the bake sale played a part in his decision, but one thing is for certain – our event brought to light the extent of public opposition to using race in admissions. In a poll that never would have been taken if not for the bake sale, Survey USA found 77 percent of Californians – across all age, ethnic, and gender groups – opposed the bill.  All Berkeley College Republicans can hold their heads high and recognize that the decision to go forward with such a controversial event impacted the course of this issue. If it wasn’t clear before, it is now – race based preferences are a thing of the past in California public universities.

Setting prices for baked goods based on race is blatantly discriminatory—in the same way that using race to judge college applicants would be discriminatory.  The Berkeley College Republicans oppose any policy that treats one racial group different from another.  Some people would call ‘treating one ethnic group different from another’ racist, and we agree with that position.  Any system or policy that judges you a certain way because of the color of your skin is discriminatory, and BCR is not okay with that.

California Senate Bill 185, which was passed by the state legislature and now awaits Governor Jerry Brown’s approval or veto, does exactly this.  It would “authorize the University of California and the California State University to consider race, gender, ethnicity, and national origin, along with other relevant factors, in undergraduate and graduate admissions”.  The bill provides no language in explaining how these factors would be considered, much less what ‘other relevant factors’ would be considered.  The vagueness of the bill opens a wide door for abuse and very little accountability.

Further, SB 185 does nothing to connect any of this information to the actual socioeconomic status of a college applicant.  As the bill is written, public universities would be authorized to use race alone as a factor in the admissions process, but certainly the color of one’s skin is not the only factor contributing to one’s opportunity or access to higher education.  Socioeconomic status is a fundamental component of the debate of equity and inclusion on our college campuses, but this bill fails to include it.  Race should not be used as a proxy for socioeconomic status.

But why hold such a controversial bake sale?  In fact, these such bake sales have been done before, so what’s the point?  Our “Increase Diversity Bake Sale” is in direct response to the ASUC’s sponsoring of a phone bank, which will make calls urging Governor Brown to sign the bill into law.  When the ASUC decided to not only take a position on policy, but also sponsor a phone bank without ever reaching out to members of the Cal Community who may have another view—the Berkeley College Republicans had to let another voice be heard.  This phone bank intends to send the message to Gov. Brown that ‘all UC Berkeley students support SB 185’ but that message is not true.

Our bake sale is intended to be at the same time and location as the ASUC-sponsored phone bank in order to demonstrate a physical counterpoint to the supporters of SB 185.  The decision to hold the bake sale was certainly to stir emotions in students and hopefully make them think more critically about a policy that judges students based on their race.  It is also important to note that the event was unanimously supported by the BCR board, which includes Hispanic, Chinese, and Taiwanese representation, with over half of the board being female.  The notion that this event was planned by a bunch of insensitive white guys is harshly inaccurate, and draws on false, negative stereotypes about Republicans.

Some members of the campus community have been outraged by our event, as they should be!  Treating people differently because of the color of their skin is unquestionably wrong, and that’s how we hope people react to the satirical bake sale, along with SB 185.  The point is that considering race in university admissions does exactly that—it treats people differently because of their race.

The strongest reactions have been targeted at the satirical pricing structure specifically, arguing that, for example, ‘a Black student is worth more than $0.75 for a cupcake’ and we couldn’t agree more.  We see the implementation of any race-based admission policy to have a negative impact on any underrepresented ethnic group because of the stigma it would create toward members of those groups.  I know that every single Hispanic, Asian, African American, or any other student here at Cal has rightfully earned their place for having an incredible mind and strong work ethic.  Race-based admissions should have no place in taking that credit away from underrepresented communities on our college campuses.

So far, the Facebook event page has a little over 200 attending in support of the bake sale, and the event will go on as planned.  The reaction on the Facebook event has been mixed, with a lot of opposition, but with some strong support as well.  Both implicit and expressed threats have been made against the creators and supporters of the event.  “Don’t make me show up to your porch with a spiked bat” and “I’ll remember your face on campus, son” were posted on the Facebook event, for example.  However, BCR does not believe threats or intimidation should stop free speech.

At a panel discussion on affirmative action the Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion, Gibor Basri, left the crowed room of aspiring lawyers, politicians and activists with this final thought: If it is difficult to discuss an issue in a way that will surely not offend other members of the campus community, a group should consider whether or not it is worth discussing that issue at all.

If the world revolved around this standard set by our Vice Chancellor, cloaked in his title of “lord of equity and inclusion”, it would be most applicable on our own campus, with a serious need for the humanities departments at UC Berkeley to re-imagine their lecture outlines for the upcoming semester, to say the least. But this is a sentiment to which no principled person, group or political organization can seriously ascribe.

The American system depends on and is defined by the ability to engage in various forms of debate and demonstration over controversial issues. It would seem that at Berkeley and across the nation that we are being asked to censor ourselves, to embrace a principle not of free speech, but one of political correctness, a syndrome that disallows much needed debate. The application of the Vice Chancellor’s statement would result in a student population ruled by silent, mindless acquiescence and complacency.

Through a controversial presentation of a controversial subject, the Berkeley College Republicans demanded participation in a discussion. They did not anonymously pull fire alarms or hide behind large groups of chanting zombies but instead stated their message through satire that no one could ignore. They begged students through their admittedly oversimplified event to think critically. Students and people here at Berkeley and across this nation found themselves researching the issue, questioning assumptions and uncovering hypocrisies that the California legislature, the UC Berkeley administration and the ASUC senate were happy to let slip away unquestioned and to many, unnoticed.

When concern for hurt feelings impedes a discussion of important issues, then we have much more to worry about than baked goods both on our campus and in our struggling democracy.

Andre (left) joins co-author of Proposition 209, Glynn Custred (center) in an affirmative action forum hosted by the Undergraduate Political Science Association.

Although many of my freedom-loving friends have swiftly and rightfully defended the upcoming bake sale organized by the Berkeley College Republicans in terms of free speech and meritocracy in education, several have simultaneously questioned the sale’s appropriateness and viability as a political tactic. Race-based satire, say these hesitant supporters, may fall entirely within the realm of legitimate free expression, but those involved would better serve their interests by taking a less provocative, more expositional approach in making their argument.

This half-baked (no pun intended) support is a serious mistake. The political left and its numerous allies make no effort to avoid stepping on the toes of those who disagree with them. As anyone who spends a few weeks immersed in the campus environment at UC Berkeley knows, the clear public consensus states that liberals alone hold the keys to the just city and that any who dare stand against them belong to a class of bigoted, antediluvian savages desperate to drag civilization back into the dark ages. Anyone who challenges the precepts of contemporary feminism is a misogynist, anyone who observes links between religion and mass murder is an “islamophobe,” and anyone who questions the legitimacy or efficacy of affirmative action is a racist.

If you are a liberal and feel the urge to voice a concern, you can march a crowd of screaming protesters through a library, or better yet, take over a classroom building, preventing thousands of students from accessing the services that either they or their parents paid thousands of dollars to obtain. All of this you may do with virtually no consequences. But if you are a conservative with some reservations about a piece of pending legislation and try to voice that opposition by selling cookies and brownies from a folding table in one small section of a massive area designated explicitly for such purposes by tradition and policy, the student newspaper will pretend that a relatively small group of professional
complainers constitutes an “immediate backlash from the UC Berkeley student community,” the ASUC will threaten to withdraw funding from your organization, and campus administrators will condemn your event as an affront to the mission of the university.

While the language of tolerance and inclusion ostensibly aims to dismantle or prevent the institutional disenfranchisement of minority groups, it has been usurped by cynical, narcissistic demagogues who routinely try to suppress sober and genuine contrary perspectives through the disingenuous manufacture of mass hysteria and social stigma. And although these tactics themselves also fall entirely within the realm of legitimate free expression, they smack of a sort of backdoor censorship just as suspicious as the willfully loose and ambiguous language of SB 185.
At this moment, libertarians everywhere should remember that government is not the only threat to free inquiry and free expression, and that not all repressive forces come from the barrel of a gun. When we stand by and watch minority opinions deliberately distorted, decried, and shouted out of view by those with no desire to listen, understand or discuss, we commit an evil as great as that of “liberal” members of Congress who failed to stand against the USA PATRIOT Act.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, let’s point out that the aimless whining of these narcissistic parasites flies in the face of reality. UC Berkeley, even in the midst of a full blown budget crisis, has one of the most extensive diversity-focused academic infrastructures on the face of the Earth. To wit, consider the following (expansive but not exhaustive) list of research wings, academic departments (subjects in which students may major, minor, or focus), student clubs, and dormitory theme houses.

Perhaps we can hear a little less from student senators and administrators about how minorities are being made to feel “uncomfortable” on their own campus. If in spite of the almost comical mile-long list of support groups above, a student still feels left out of the kickball game, I submit the remedy to his ailment is not political, but pharmaceutical. Perhaps he (or she…no, wait, I’m succumbing to binary gender norms erected by the WASP patriarchy!) should try Zoloft—that is, if he can get up the nerve to betray his conviction that drug manufacturers are greedy, corporate fascists.

Clearly, the only form of diversity lacking at Berkeley is the only form that matters: intellectual diversity. Sheer politeness will never overcome the mountain of implicit and explicit censorship raining down on the political right from all sides. Mockery, however, as demonstrated by the outpouring of local and national attention following the bake sale’s announcement, may prove an excellent start. So let’s applaud the Berkeley College Republicans for subjecting the egotistical bubble of this campus to a much-needed prodding. And if you can, join me at the event today, where I’ll gladly purchase you a cookie at my premium diversity rate of 75 cents. ■

Exclusive photo of the volunteers meeting held the night before the Bake Sale to ensure full understanding of what was to happen the next day.

Say what you will about the propriety of the Berkeley College Republicans’ “Increase Diversity Bake Sale,” it did wonders for actually creating a dialogue on this politically monochrome campus.  The volunteers running the event were constantly interrupted in their duties by passersby who wanted to know more about the bake sale, the legislation the College Republicans were protesting, and affirmative action.  And then I got a question every politician loathes: “Who stands to benefit if you don’t get your way, and why?”

It’s a worthy question for an era in which the public is told the sky will fall if some politician’s pet project doesn’t get implemented.  During the frenzy of bailouts in the past few years, the importance of “too big to fail” institutions was hyped up, and the losers were taxpayers and smaller businesses that didn’t have the political connections to cover the losses on their bad investments.

When it comes to racial preferences for employment or education, though, we find that the policies will simultaneously achieve their objectives while making everyone – even the supposed beneficiaries of the policy – worse off.

The objective of racial preferences is to increase the (ethnic) diversity of an institution.  There’s no question that racial preferences achieve this objective.  This is basic economics: when the barriers to something decrease, we see more of it; when barriers increase, we see less.  Indeed, when California’s Proposition 209 passed in 1996, the University of California had to increase the standards by which minority applicants were judged, and predictably, fewer were accepted.  The objective of SB 185, which was designed to test the limits of Prop 209, was to artificially lower the barriers to minority enrollment, thereby increasing it.  It remains to be seen if that is in fact desirable.  A personal anecdote:

During the 1970′s, Cornell University was hunting desperately for female engineering students to meet their quota.  My mother, meanwhile, was anxious to get out of her high school, which was not serving her well.  She graduated high school early, and thanks to Cornell’s affirmative action program, obtained a full scholarship.  Indeed, she got precisely the opportunity advocates of affirmative action point to: access to a top-tier university that would have otherwise been beyond her means.  But, having graduated early, she had no coursework in calculus, physics, or chemistry.  She went from the top of her high school class to the bottom of her college engineering class.  She would drop out of engineering and switch to English – and for perspective, the New York Times was at the time writing extensively on how the Cornell English Department was the worst in the country.  Did Cornell do her a favor?  All signs point to no.  She had to forego many opportunities to take advantage of the one Cornell offered her: the (admittedly limited) math and science curriculum of her high school, potential work experience, and the time she wasted struggling – and ultimately failing – in her coursework.  Any of these would have served her better than Cornell did.

Berkeley professor teaching Entrepreneurship of Engineering describes to a crowd the ways in which affirmative action has a negative impact on society.

My mother’s case is not unique: every time the standards for an “underrepresented” group are lowered, dropout rates for that group also increase, and students also tend to shift away from technical degrees that offer an opportunity to escape poverty – such as finance, engineering, law, and medicine – and into majors that offer income potentials not much above a high school diploma. Thus minority students are encouraged to drown themselves in debt to obtain credentials with negligible earnings potential, perpetuating the “cycle of poverty” affirmative action supporters point to as justifications for their policy preferences.

Equal opportunity is so much more than just a system that throws the “right” demographics into the degree mill, because opportunity is not just being in the right place, but having the preparation to take advantage of it.  And that’s the great risk of adding non-objective preferences to the hiring or admissions criteria of institutions: because the bar is necessarily lowered for these applicants, these policies have the effect of putting the people who need and deserve the most help in a position to fail.     If we wish to end the cycle of poverty, we need to stop trying to tinker around the edges at the level of college admissions and permitting unprepared students to attend university.  Opportunity doesn’t come from disregarding candidates’ lack of preparation.  Instead, we should be focusing our attention on how to give those students the preparation they need to succeed.  This could take the form of devoting more attention to K-12 education, or incorporating the trades into secondary school curriculum.  Given that State education is failing so many low-income and minority students, this could extend to a voucher program to separate the funding of schools from their administration.  It could even take the form of efforts to reduce crime rates and reduce the barriers to employment for those convicted of crimes, so that the children of former criminals have access to more educational resources on their way to higher education.  But the poor will never escape their plight if, acting with the best of intentions, we set them up for the fall.

I would have never thought that Berkeley, a campus that prides itself on free speech, would have reacted that way it did to the bake sale. Even before the event took place, the Facebook event page was filled with comments threatening our members and threatening to shut down the event. However, it did not stop with threats. People began personally targeting our non-white members and calling them “tokens” or “brainwashed.” Of all the things that resulted from this event, I will never forget the personal attacks these students, who claim to respect diversity and defend against hate, made to me and other members of Berkeley College Republicans.

On the day of the bake sale, I worked at the table selling the cupcakes and was somewhat prepared for strong opposition. Yet, I never expected students to come up to the table and call me a “token” or “disgrace to Latinos.” I expected more from students that attend one of the best universities in California and the nation. These students assume that because of my background and my skin color, I should automatically support S.B 185, but my background only furthers my opposition to the bill. I was born here in California, but both my parents are immigrants from Peru who came to this country with nothing. At one point, my father was balancing two jobs while my mother worked and took care of me. My father and mother have struggled and worked unbelievably hard to get where they are and to give me the opportunity to get an education and life they never could. Obviously I could not let my parents down, so I worked hard in community college to get high grades while at the same time being heavily involved in local and regional level student government. So why would I want to diminish the value of being accepted into UC Berkeley? No longer would all the work that my parents and I accomplished have the same value. People, and even future employers, would see my acceptance to the university as being based on my skin color and not merit. I am more than just brown.

However, my opposition is built on much more than just my background. As a society, I believe we need to move past having laws that treat people differently based on skin color, even if it is positive treatment. Passing a law that gives preference to certain skin colors only heightens racial tensions. Putting aside the fact that S.B 185 is unconstitutional, the bill simply does not make sense. The bill states, “The University of California may, and the California State University may, consider race, gender, ethnicity, national origin, geographic origin, and household income, along with other relevant factors, in undergraduate and graduate admissions, so long as no preference is given.” How do you consider something and not give it preference? Even if one could consider but not give preference, then why even consider? With all this being said, I am not blind to the inequality of opportunity in attending a UC or CSU. It is obvious that a student with a 3.6 GPA from Oakland to a student with a 3.8 GPA from Beverly Hills do not come from an equal playing ground. The latter student comes from a city that is wealthier with better schools and less crime. Hence, a bill should be put forth that considers factors like these and others like household income, and give preference to students who come from more difficult backgrounds and are still performing well academically. This would be the best manner in which to improve diversity on campus without increasing racial tensions and moving our society backwards. People should remember what Martin Luther King once said, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

That the debt ceiling issue was manufactured is an indisputable fact. The ceiling should have been raised as a matter of course, as it has been so often in the past. Budget deficits and long term fiscal problems could have been handled without creating a crisis. Yet the far right of the GOP tried to wring long-term fiscal concessions from Obama as the price of raising the debt ceiling, and brought the United States to the brink of default. The result was the loss of America’s AAA rated status as a borrower. It may even be that the modest economic recovery ground to a halt in part because of the unnecessary crisis and the fear it caused. Had more Republicans been willing to compromise, there would have been no crisis.

The spirit of compromise is an essential pillar for any sound ideological construct. The Tea Party’s brand of fiscal conservatism all too often lacks it. The Constitution is the product of compromise. Our political process, with its federalism, bicameral legislature, and three branches, requires an abundance of compromise to function optimally. President Eisenhower, in Waging Peace, the second volume of his political memoirs, observed that the right people can make a bad system (political or otherwise) work well, and that the wrong people can make a great system appear broken down. The latter, it would appear, is the case in Washington right now because the spirit of compromise is conspicuously absent.

Fiscal conservatives must be willing to compromise on the issue of taxes if our nation is to remain solvent over time. In discussions of long term deficit and debt reduction Democrats have expressed a willingness to see cuts to America’s welfare state. Republicans should evince a similar willingness to see modest tax increases. This has not happened, and it needs to happen. Ronald Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, astutely observed in a 60 minutes interview that tax cutting has become “gospel, something that is embedded in the catechism.” He asserted that Republicans calling for tax cuts in the face of huge deficits were guilty of “rank demagoguery.”

Were President Eisenhower still alive, he would probably agree with Stockman’s assessment. When he took office in 1953, fellow Republicans pressured him to cut taxes. He refused on the grounds that the deficit he inherited from President Truman was too big, that balancing budgets were more important than cutting taxes. This principled position enabled President Eisenhower, at the height of the Cold War, to balance three budgets and substantially reduce the nation’s debt to GDP ratio. He was a true fiscal conservative, an example from which today’s Republicans ought to learn. Balancing budgets is, or should be, a higher priority than cutting taxes. Any substantive deal on entitlement reform will require tax increases to accompany spending cuts. We should be willing to accept them as necessary for the national good, even if we find them objectionable.

I fear that a spirit of extremism has infected parts of the Republican Party. Tax increases will not bring about the end of the world or (provided that they are not too large) the destruction of our way of life. Sometimes, unfortunately, they are necessary to accomplish a greater good. Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said that “taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.” Our nation’s fiscal health requires that they be higher than we prefer. To be a true fiscal conservative is to recognize this fact and the absolute necessity of compromise. ■

Indeed, given the current size and scope of our national government, this deadlock of dissatisfaction should come as no surprise. The United States is the third most inhabited nation in the world, with over 312 million people residing within her borders. Furthermore, its citizenry represents a rather heterogeneous slice of the world’s population, with every ethnicity, religion, and lifestyle imaginable. With such multiplicity of worldviews and a singular federal stage for them to be heard, great irritation towards such an inefficient political process is bound to arise. It is no wonder that Americans receive the same unsatisfactory quasi-socialist product of endless wars, runaway entitlements, and corporate welfare year after year regardless of which political party is in power. With no room for policy experimentation on the federal stage, moderation and compromise becomes the name of the game. As a result, all parties leave the negotiating table dissatisfied, and “change” becomes nothing more than a meaningless buzzword from an empty-promised politician.

Fortunately, the Constitution provides an antidote to this ill-fated ailment. Indeed, I think “panacea” is a more suitable word to describe it. The Tenth Amendment, reserving “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution” for the states’ control, provides the blueprint for a more streamlined political process that would lead to greater satisfaction for people of every persuasion.# With stricter states’ rights, policymaking would take place on a more localized level, thus empowering citizens with a greater voice in political deliberation. Engaged Americans could petition their local governments for laws customized to their community instead of a one-size-fits-all national “solution” being imposed on them from Washington, as is too often the case today through endless involuntary mandates, regulations, and programs. Best of all, states’ rights are viewpoint neutral, giving equal freedom for all ideologies to influence local legislatures and greater room for policy experimentation. Liberal states like California could pass progressive policies, while conservative states like Texas could enact more market-friendly solutions. Thus, instead of wasting their energy on bipartisan bickering in Washington, statesmen and citizens alike can channel their zeal towards productive policymaking in their own community, where they contain more local knowledge and are confronted with less hostility. As a result the United States would become true laboratories of democracy, as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis so eloquently described them in 1932, where “a single courageous state may… try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country” and thus policies of all shapes and sizes could be experimented.

Indeed, even under the battered condition that the Tenth Amendment is in today, political activists on both sides of the aisle are still finding it to be a reliable vehicle to drive policy change across the country. On the Left, California’s 1996 passage of Proposition 215 legalizing medical marijuana has lead to greater legal acceptance of the drug. As a consequence of this “single courageous state” initiative and its peaceful results, fifteen other states have followed suit, empowering their citizens with greater individual liberty. On the Right, the drastic drop in crime rates seen in Florida after the enactment of their 1987 concealed carry law has lead to growing popularity for the movement. This “novel social and economic experiment” created a domino effect across the country in which restrictive statutes obstructing the right to bear arms have fallen one after the other, leading to greater security for society at large. Best of all, both movements gained political popularity through voluntary means with states enacting the laws of their own initiative, rather having it shoved down their throats through federal thuggery.

In Plato’s dialogue Crito, Socrates makes a famous contribution to political theory on the nature of governmental consent. Condemned to death by an Athenian jury, the philosopher refuses to flee his jail cell under the rationale that he had “entered into an implied contract” to obey the city’s policies. After all, the Ancient Greek reasons, if he were dissatisfied with their laws, he was “at liberty to leave the city” and move to a jurisdiction he found more agreeable. Ideally under the Constitution, states would function in a similar way, allowing Americans the liberty to move to the state they find to have their favorite flavor or policy. Unfortunately, with the federal leviathan strangling states’ rights today, Americans cannot escape its dissatisfying grip of mandates and regulations regardless of where they live. However, if Washington would pay greater respect to the Constitution and therefore states’ rights, Americans would have greater choice and voice in policymaking and, consequently, greater satisfaction.