STAFF EDITORIAL: Bigotry rears its ugly head

Yesterday's hate-filled letter to Penn's Hillel chapter stands as another sobering reminder of intolerance in the community. This week, for Jews, is different than all other weeks. During this week, Jews everywhere celebrate their freedom from oppression. Now, for Penn's Jewish community, that celebratory spirit is necessarily dampened. Unfortunately, the Hillel attack is the second of its kind on this campus in the space of the last month. Just a few weeks ago, on the verge of B-GLAD 2000, members of the Queer Student Alliance found a hateful, epithet-laden e-mail in their inboxes. At that time, we decried an attack presumed to have come from a member of the Penn community. We wrote of the pride we often take in this community's image of diversity and openness, and of the need to redouble our commitment to making that vision of Penn a reality. Today's lesson is both less immediate and more sobering. The origins of the letter remain unknown -- there is no evidence that anyone associated with this campus is responsible. This time, hopefully, the fault does not lie in ourselves. And yet, this letter serves as a bitter reminder that the real world is never so very far away. Even on Penn's campus, even inside of the ivory tower, there is no immunity from the outside world. It is not enough to be secure in our own open-mindedness. It is not enough that the members of this campus community treat each other with respect and dignity. Until the same can be said of the members of the broader community -- of this city, this nation and, ultimately, this world -- the illusion of progress is just that: An illusion. There is no quick way to heal in the wake of these two attacks. There is no short-term means of comforting those whose right to live in the way they choose has been questioned. Nor should there be. The pain felt by members of these two groups is real, and it is an objective lesson on the price of hate.