Ideally, a university campus should be a sanction for diversity. Different ideas, lifestyles and backgrounds should be encouraged and embraced, not repressed and pushed away. The college years should be a time to explore one’s uniqueness and find one’s true self.
Unfortunately, many college campuses are not safe havens for diversity. While no university is perfect when it comes to fostering individuality, the University of La Verne community as a whole is far from being tolerant. This semester especially, tensions seem to be growing between different groups on campus.
This week is National Coming Out Week, a time that the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Student Union (GLBSU) has tried to use to educate people about homosexuality and to support the gay community. As part of its celebration, the group spent Tuesday night painting the rock, a long standing ULV tradition. Wednesday morning, however, the rock and the sidewalk in front of it were defaced. The vandals had covered the original message with orange spray paint and repainted the rock with a derogatory statement.
There is absolutely no excuse for the vandalism of the rock. The same rock is painted weekly, if not daily at some times of the year, by many other groups on campus, but their messages are rarely defaced. Many people do not agree with the slogans and letters the Greek organizations paint on the rock, but they do not go out and show their displeasure with vandalism. The defacing of the rock was blatant disrespect of a group’s rights and should not be tolerated.
While many areas of campus have a problem with segregation, the GLBSU has continually had to endure it. In past years, the group has tried to organize on campus but has been forced to disband because of the intolerance and ignorance of peers. Last semester was the first time the union was successfully started. This shows that the ULV community has become more open minded, but the events of this past week prove that it still has a long way to go.
I have heard comments from my classmates that homosexuals should stay in the closet, where they belong.
Comments such as these enrage me! I do not expect everybody to condone homosexuality, but is it too much to expect a little tolerance? Whatever a person’s views about homosexuality, it comes down to an issue of respect. We should all learn to at least respect, if not completely tolerate, divergent points of view.
But sexuality is not the only area that deserves tolerance on this campus. Race has become an increasing problem. Racism is a concern everywhere and it is ignorant to think it can be solved overnight, but some attention needs to be paid to the subject. If it is continually ignored, it will never go away.
Race has always been a sensitive subject, but has become even more so since the O.J. Simpson verdict. The racial divide that is focused on almost daily in the news has even touched ULV. Just take a glance at page 2. One column by a Campus Times editor which explored that subject generated nearly a whole page of letters in response. And those letters only represent the small portion of the population who took the time to respond. Just think of the number of people who also feel the same way but chose to remain silent.
Everybody, no matter how tolerant, carries a certain amount of prejudice. It is impossible to erase this prejudice that has been ingrained by society into a person since childhood. But it is not impossible to learn to be tolerant and respectful of those people with different views, beliefs or preferences. While nobody is the same, a person is a person, regardless of sexuality or the color of her skin.
In the film “Higher Learning,” director John Singleton explores what can happen on a university campus if prejudice gets out of hand. Most people like to think that a scenario like the one presented in the movie could never happen at ULV, but what if it does? In this world, anything is possible.
