CJ Guion

As many of you are aware, on Monday night around 9:10 pm, unknown suspects wrote hateful messages on the entrance of the GLBT Center targeted at the community.

It is really sad that this is something that has happened every year that I have been a student enrolled at this university stemming back to 2008 when hateful messages were written in the Free Expression Tunnel targeted towards President Obama and the African American community. While I hate that something like this happened, I am glad that it finally happened outside of the Free Expression Tunnel, which finally forces the university to take action against this when they find out who committed this heinous crime. Personally, neither incident should be tolerated. If we were out in the “real world” both would be considered vandalism. One thing that we can agree on is that this is not an act of free expression.

While this crime does not show a true reflection of the majority of the students on this campus, I firmly believe that intolerance and prejudice on this campus is a bigger issue than we choose to believe. We need to finally be honest with ourselves and admit that there are a good number of people on this campus who are intolerant of people who belong to certain groups.

Even if you don’t support the GLBT community, you must realize that at the end of the day they are still people. They hurt the same as anyone else, and they deserve respect just like anyone else.

We all pay tuition to this university, and we all should be guaranteed a good education in a safe and welcoming environment. This is a serious matter, which we cannot and will not continue to brush under the rug. This has to be a conversation that does not simply end with a big event that states how diverse this campus is. We’ve done that many times, and the same thing happens over and over.

The university needs to make an example out of the person whenever they find out who committed this crime. It is a poor reflection on this university and a poor example of the progress that we have made in this country towards equality for all people.

I believe that the African American community should stand with the GLBT community, being that we’ve been down this road many times in the past few years.

We cannot solely just support actions that are targeted towards our group. The GLBT center has supported the African American community in the past, and it’s our turn to support them. We have to be a united force to tackle this issue, and make sure that the university does not support actions such as this.