In recent times, more so than last year, I have noticed some things that bother me. My friend had a picture up on her door. It was a picture of two women kissing. I had thought she had a right to put whatever she wanted to put up on her door, without being harassed or having the picture defaced, but as it turned out, we came home the other night and one of the women had a devil's horns and a beard.Does that enrage you? Well, you can comfort yourself because there was no picture of two women kissing on her door... it was a picture of Ronald Reagan at a podium but with the same marks of defacement on it. Defacing a picture of two women here would be defined her as a narrow-minded expression of hatred toward homosexuals, and I believe the defacement of Reagan's picture is just as narrow-minded an expression of hatred, but this time directed toward conservatism.

Bear in mind, though, that it is not merely this isolated event which lead me to write this article. Last year, there were several conservative items that were defaced on both mine and my friends doors, and of course there is the ubiquitous snort I get whenever I mention my political beliefs are Republican. It was a quote in this newspaper which served, you might say, as the straw that broke the camel's back. The quote, as some of you might remember, was an anonymous one and was as follows: "Conservative bigots, man the barricades, the Liberals are out in force."

This quote was taken from a person during national coming out weekend while people were chanting slogans meant to break stereotypes and gain acceptance in society for those with alternate views. I believe this quote represents a stereotype that conservatives around here are generally branded with (last year `conservative' was grouped with `racist, homophobic, sexist, classist and elitist), and I want to encourage people to move away from this stereotype.

All I ask for is for such people who believe that all conservatives are simply bigots is to open their minds, or, in other words, practice what they preach. How can you possibly have diversity while at the same time dismissing an entire way of thinking? If the people did open their minds a little and heard the reasoning behind some conservative arguments, they might discover that the arguments do have validity, and that it is simply a different way to attack the same problems that Democrats have to deal with. In essence, what I'm saying is that conservative thinking is just a different way of looking at things, and if you listen to what they have to say, you might realize that it is not bigoted, and some of it might actually make some sense to you. So please, in the spirit of National Coming Out Weekend, try to open your minds a little more to a different way of thinking.

George Schneider '01

Vice-President, College Republicans