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No place for hate
About two weeks ago, I received a message on my white board on my dorm door that read "DIE." Later that evening I was sitting at home and I received harassing phone calls, saying "You're a f***ing fairy . . ." and so on. Today, when I was at work in the GLBT Services office on campus, I checked our suggestions box, and inside there were many hateful sayings. A few of those said, "DIE FAGS; GAY � Got Aids Yet?; AIDS - Anallly Infected Death Sentence; Do you like to suck cock? Welcome to Stewarts Deli, at 12:30 a.m., we allow gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, gay-bashing starts at 12:45 a.m." (Some of the messages have been altered here because of the perpetrators' poor spelling.) These might not be all the instances that have happened in the past few weeks; a lot of cases don't even get reported.
With all of this going on, I have fear being on this campus, and I know many other people in the GLBT community that feel the same way I do. I feel I cannot express myself the way I should be able to. I must have a "watchful eye" constantly with my surroundings and I lock my door to my dorm when I am in it, in fear of someone coming in. I am not trying to say that hate crimes only happen to GLBT students on this campus, because I know that hate happens on this campus to people because of their color, national origin, gender presentation, sexual orientation, etc. But, what I am saying is, as students, faculty, staff, campus and community, we need to deal with these issues immediately.
As a person who has been the victim of these crimes many times, I will NOT tolerate it. And for the perpetrators, they need to know that we will not tolerate it. As an individual, community, campus, etc. each of us must take our role in stopping and confronting bias towards any community. Stepping up to the issues we are facing is one step in the process of making this a better campus for all of us. I don't want to live in fear anymore, but I will until I know that this kind of behavior is not tolerated nor accepted and when I can feel that I can be myself again.
Trace Ludewig
Freshman
Undeclared
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