Ethnic movies at Memorial Union, live international bands on the terrace and a variety of food stands on State Street are just some of the perks of attending school at UW-Madison. After being immersed in other cultures, I did not anticipate seeing the outright bigotry as I have.
UW-Madison is known as being the Berkeley of the Midwest,"" meaning the university has a population of liberal, intelligent and open-minded students. It is, therefore, quite shocking that after living here for only three weeks, I have already encountered incidents of racial discrimination.
I was stunned to find inappropriate words written in red permanent marker all over the whiteboards on my floor last Friday morning. ""Bitch"" and ""nasty cunt"" were repeated on many of the boards, but most outrageous were the bigoted slurs. ""Jew cock"" was written on my board and ""Nigg"" was smeared on another student's board in huge letters.
The University of Wisconsin System Regents Policy on Discrimination says, ""racist and other discriminatory conduct toward students, employees, officials and guests in the University of Wisconsin System is conduct which will not be tolerated."" This is a clear statement saying discriminatory acts don't belong at UW-Madison.
After I had seen the bigotry in my building, I immediately wanted to know who had done it and why. However, the underlying and more important question is, what encouraged a person to do such a thing? When I saw those words written on my board, my initial reactions were outrage and sadness.
Coming to Wisconsin, I knew I was in the minority by being Jewish, but I never thought that I would experience discrimination, let alone in such a short amount of time.
The individual who did this most likely did not think how it would impact the entire dorm. Not only were the victims on the boards offended, but anyone that heard about the incident was furious at the immaturity of whoever wrote the remark. The fact that acts like these occur can make anyone feel wary and susceptible.
This time, the discrimination was directed toward Jews and Blacks, but tomorrow the target could be toward anyone. This event made me realize I need to be more careful when making friends and meeting new people at UW-Madison. While this was a small-scale incident, I now understand that people are unpredictable.
Whether the person who is responsible for this did it out of hatred or merely as a joke, the fact that incidents like these still happen today - in a community that is so diverse and open - is shameful.
Since this is a university of more than 30,000 students, I knew many races and cultures would be represented. I still believe there are many individuals who are broad minded and tolerant individuals. Future students should be able to have the same expectation. Students at UW-Madison should set higher standards for themselves and be accepting, welcoming and open to everyone.
Aylah Loewenstein is a junior majoring in psychology. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
