Immersing oneself in the college environment brings students countless opportunities to expand their worldview and develop their social conscience and behaviors. This process can show itself in many ways, all of them very clear and noticeable. One social development this board would love to see instilled in all ISU students, is the common decency not to throw around derogatory terms or speak in a way that belittles any of our fellow human beings based solely on aspects of themselves which they have no ability to control. One of the many terms that falls into this category is the “r-word”: retarded.

Last week, the national awareness event Spread the Word to End the Word, which occurs annually in March, worked to bring about the exact change that this editorial is calling for. However, while some may have been able to resist using the word or put tighter constraints on their word choice filter, the word was right back on the tongues of students at Iowa State.

The justifications for using the word are well known and any of us can recite them.

“Oh, I don’t mean anything by it. I’m not even talking about the mentality handicapped. I just use it to refer to stupid people.” Or this gem, “When I say retarded, I mean people who I think are morons. When I’m talking about the mentally handicapped, I say special.”

The counter argument is very simple: It doesn’t matter what you mean by your words, what matters is the result those words have. The intent of a comment will never be as important as how it impacts those who hear it.

Facile arguments like those listed above provide hopelessly insufficient defenses to those who are content to choose their words without consideration for others. There should, quite simply, be no excuse for using the term in a derogatory fashion. If you want to tell me that a movie or a person or anything is stupid, then please use the word stupid. But the “r-word” will never be an acceptable replacement for talking about something you don’t like.

As a college student, you surely have a sufficient grasp on the language to find more appropriate words to use. But just in case anyone is drawing a blank, here are a few you can choose from: bad, stupid, dumb, annoying, terrible, awful, not good.

But never the “r-word”. Never the word that puts people down and makes human beings synonymous with anything undesirable.