There is an active promotion of intolerance which has contaminated this campus more severely than the Veishea riots. Buildings and property can be replaced. Damaged psyches cannot. Presently, Iowa State’s collective psyche is in critical condition.

It is not just racial and sexual differences that are unacceptable, but also differences in ideological opinions.

I feel that free speech here has a strange tendency to be heavily constricted. It’s no wonder that dialogues cannot be initiated among the masses. We are adults with muzzles.

We students, faculty and administration of Iowa State, Ames residents and employees of the Daily must administer full responsibility for alleviating racial and sexual tensions at ISU.

I will not be pointing fingers since we all know who we are. This intolerant garbage must start to end. Not tomorrow or next week, but right NOW!

I am well aware that obtaining a college education is the primary objective for being in a setting of higher learning. We go to class to learn something from our professors and to study what is taught.

That is an idealized vision of college life. College isn’t about being over-consumed by classwork as as escape mechanism from the “real world.”

I remember an incident while I was getting my English degree where I learned that outside learning is the best form of development for college students.

During my freshman year, I was actively involved in divestiture protests against companies that did business in South Africa.

I had a conversation with another freshman, an admitted Marxist/socialist from Nutley, who learned more during this movement than in any of his political science classes.

He and I became very good friends until we lost contact in the middle of our junior year.

At times, learning can be equally enhanced by both the classroom and the outside world. There is absolutely nothing wrong.

When writing columns, a theme is undeclared because I feel that people who read them are intelligent enough to figure them out.

This week will be an exception to that rule because I will be discussing an idea that I would like your input on. If it catches on, you will hear more about it.

What actions must be taken for change without a whole lot of elaboration? I am proposing a simple demonstration against intolerance.

It stems from a conversation that I had with a friend of mine, Laura Duck, who read an article on the community of Bozeman, Mont., which rallied several years ago behind a local Jewish family victimized by anti-Semitic perpetrators. Supporters placed a Menorah in every window of each home in solidarity.

My friend wanted to do something similar in her dorm that would promote the same thing by hanging black triangles in response to recent campus-wide racial/sexual turmoil.

She also asked me if the Daily was planning to confront all of this intolerance. I couldn’t really answer since I didn’t know. After talking with her, as an editorial columnist I began to think about expanding her idea on a wider scale to include the entire university.

I know that we have the dorm door policy, but maybe we could wear buttons made of black triangles to take a stand against intolerance as a united front in declaring that prejudice of any stripe will not be allowed.

It’s been wonderful that the Daily has recently taken strong positions to fight this madness, but more needs to be done. As the printed voice of ISU, we are community leaders who need to pursue a greater stand!

So I am asking you, the ISU community to help out in spreading the message that narrow-minded behavior of any kind is unacceptable.

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Adrian DeVore is a senior in food science from Newark, H.J. She has a bachelor’s in English from Rutgers University (Douglass College).