Due to the frequency with which hate and bigotry are expressed on this campus, you would think that we’d have become desensitized to it.  And yet, the past couple of weeks have had the opposite effect.  It seems that each new travesty has shocked us, if possible, more and not less than the one before it.   

The fact of the matter is that hate is as big an issue now as it ever was.  Even as we stand at the threshold of a new era, where an African American could be elected to lead us, where the denigration of a person based on their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation is punishable as a felony, implicit and explicit hatred lingers like snow in the springtime.

Bigotry perpetuates itself.  Perpetuates itself with the help of those who see it and do nothing.  You know, like the people who sat silent at a table in the cafeteria while their friends spewed hate at a fellow student. To those who fall in that category – of those who remain complacent in the face of hate – we ask that you come forward.  Hate crimes are, on first offense, a Class 3 Felony, carrying a prison sentence of up to five years.  But that punishment is only effective if it can be carried out.  Come on.  We need someone to make an example of.  If you know who wrote, “Die Muslims!” and drew a swastika on the inside of someone’s locker, please say something.  You can remain anonymous.  But the person must be brought to justice, expelled from the college, and punished to the fullest extent of the law.  Also, they should be subject to public humiliation.

Now, we know that most of you are probably just as sickened by hatred and bigotry as we are.  Please – let this oversaturated week and a half inspire you to action.  We’re opening a campus-wide forum on our website.  Go there and tell us what you think should be done.  Let the campus know that hate and intolerance is unacceptable.
And finally, to the students who who’ve spread their hate, who’ve remained nameless, faceless behind their Sharpies as they defaced property; who’ve ignorantly threatened, excluded, and dismissed their peers based on the differences that should be celebrated, not frowned upon: this next part is to you.

You are the one who does not belong.  College campuses are places of diversity – diversity of background, of thought, of color, of creed, of everything.  If you cannot handle that diversity, then you belong somewhere else.  If you cannot muster within yourself a basic respect for other human beings, even if you do not agree with them, then not only do you not belong on a college campus, but you will find it impossible to succeed in our increasingly diverse world.

But you’ve heard this before.  You’ve heard it, and you’ve dismissed it, just as you will now.  That is, if you are even reading this.  The terrible truth is that the people reading this editorial are probably the ones who don’t need to.  We’re probably preaching to the choir. 

That’s why it is so imperative that we take action, and take it now.  The college is revamping the gen ed program.  Maybe it’s time to require a class in diversity.  Or maybe we start branding perpetrators with a scarlet letter, like in that Nathaniel Hawthorne book.  Except instead of an A for "adulterer," as is the case in the novel, we use a B for "bigot;" or an I for "intolerant;" or maybe an S, for "small-minded-prick-that-will-be-left-behind-the-times."

BE HEARD:

On our web site, ecleader.com, we will be conducting a campus-wide forum to discuss hate.  We encourage you to make your voice heard on the issue.  Tell us what you think should be done to curb this type of antisocial behavior.  We only ask that you be respectful - The Leader reserves the right to remove comments deemed inappropriate.
See the picture just to the right of this column? It makes us sick. It is vile, and it is idiotic. Plain and simple, no two ways about it. We are conducting an investigation to figure out who is behind it. If you know who did it, contact us. Please.