There are confirmed bigots on this campus-four of them. One has debased this newspaper with a racial slur. Another has put up an obscene and intolerant poster. Another has scribbled a swastika, and yet another student has etched his intolerance into our beautiful snow. To my knowledge, the bigots have received little or no sympathy from either the student body or the administration, if they haven't been outright punished for their actions. Yet, as the majority of Brandeis students have gone about their normal routines despite the actions of a few rotten apples, a number among us have decided to dwell on those isolated incidents. Whether out of sincere motives or not, some students have made callous and unfair generalizations about the students of this university. They have designated Brandeis as a hotbed of racial, ethnic and religious intolerance and, in the process, have implicated an entire campus population in egregious crimes with which it has little or nothing to do.

Case in point: The recently-chartered Brandeis Coalition for Tolerance has made it known that the "tolerance" in their club name will be replaced by a more lofty and embracing noun only once the Brandeis community has proven its ability to tolerate ethnic, racial and religious diversity. "Respect," "love" and "friendship," the club claims, are much too impractical to be used given the present campus-wide breakdown in racial and ethnic relations. One step at a time, they say.

Make no mistake-BCT is at the forefront of many beneficial and necessary campus awareness programs. Yet I find it deeply disturbing that the group has found it appropriate to label 3,000 of its peers in the nastiest of terms. Who gave these students the moral authority to define the conscience of a campus? Perhaps they are in possession of knowledge to which I am not privileged-if someone would enlighten me, I'm all ears.

I find it equally disturbing that the majority of students seem to be oblivious to the accusations which are mounted against them. Perhaps we are smug with self-certainty- "they can't possibly be talking about me, can they?" Perhaps the vague language of "campus intolerance" is a bit too general to shock us into realizing that our integrity has been hijacked.

Let's be clear about something-when someone implicates a campus, he or she doesn't mean to accuse one, two or three individual students, but rather the entire student body. To claim that the "campus atmosphere" is one of hate is to take a jab at every individual student who lives amid and contributes to that atmosphere. I take the claim very personally.

I am not a racist. I am not intolerant. Neither are my friends. Neither is the great majority of my community. The swastika was not the work of a clandestine Nazi cell in operation on campus, and there has been no student rush to enlist in the Mad T Party. I know of no student who has come out in support of the perpetrators of intolerance.

On the contrary-over the past five months I have seen a mammoth expression of love and respect in direct response to the actions of a bigoted few. Hundreds of students attended a solidarity meeting in the days following the posting of a hateful anti-Muslim poster, and the appearance of a racial slur in the Justice provoked a strong show of solidarity from the entire community.

In their participation in the forums and meetings surrounding these incidents, Brandeis students did not intend to implicate themselves in the crimes of their peers. Rather, their responses were intended to express the greater community's empathy towards its injured members. Unfortunately, it seems, this intent has gone unrecognized and unappreciated by some.

Brandeis students also responded to the swastika incident with a strong, albeit silent, assertion of their support for the community's Jewish members. Their silence in the immediate aftermath of the incident should not be mistaken for apathy-silence, as far as I am concerned, was a most appropriate response. In their protest and in their silence, Brandeis students have decided to let bigots be bigots and to move forward with supreme confidence in the moral integrity of their community.

We are good people, and we deserve to be acknowledged as such. As our moral character has been challenged by those who wish to find fault, I urge every Brandeisian to answer that challenge. Let's move forward, with love and respect, past the moral failures of our peers. If a member of our community feels afraid walking to class, accompany him or her with a smile. If a fellow student is feeling vulnerable, ease his or her worries. When engaged in debate with another student on a certain political or ideological issue, speak with respect and humility. These are things we all can do; we do them on a regular basis. May we continue to learn and grow from each other in an atmosphere of love and respect.