Boy, am I ashamed to be a Wildcat today. Lexington has felt its share of shame in the past — one merely has to think about where you’re at while sitting on the patio at Cheapside Bar and Grille. But we were always able to rationalize that those actions occurred in the past, that we had reached a point where racism simply wasn’t an issue. Or at least that’s what some of us like to tell ourselves.

Racism was a problem for a different generation. Mind you, we’re telling ourselves this while racist jokes are being made around us, while people are rushing in to assure Americans that Barack Obama isn’t a Muslim, as if you couldn’t be Muslim and a “true” American, all at the same time, and while most groups on campus are still divided by race. I thought we had moved past ‘separate, but equal.’ You’d be hard-pressed to prove that in many UK organizations though. This is not to say that efforts haven’t been made to change this, just that we’re far from reaching our goals on this issue. The Nick Phelps (former SG president) e-mail scandal from January of this year is proof enough that we still have work to do.

The hanging of an Obama effigy on campus Wednesday morning was deplorable, cowardly and disgusting. Yet, hardly unexpected. It merely proves what many of us have always suspected, that the racial undertones on campus are just barely hidden beneath polite speech. As much as it sickens me, I am aware that this kind of behavior is protected by our right to free speech.

But this isn’t the same as the effigy hung of Sarah Palin earlier this week in West Hollywood. Both are disgusting, and beyond the bounds of the kind of political discourse that can actually produce something productive. But that action didn’t occur in the South, didn’t involve an African-American candidate, and didn’t evoke images of lynchings that occurred in this very place. This makes the two completely different in how they are perceived.

UK President Lee Todd said in his e-mail to the university that he would like to “personally assure (the Obama family) that this is not who we are as a university or as a state.” Unfortunately, I disagree with him. This is exactly who we are. And until we acknowledge it as such, and work to change the underlying racism present here, all the diversity-increasing actions in the world won’t make a difference.

Laurel Benson

English senior

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The effigy of Sen. Barack Obama that was found on UK’s campus is an outrage for all people of any shred of human decency. The fact that this was found on our campus speaks to larger implications about our state and our university.

Why a person’s race invokes such rage and hatred in some people is beyond the ability for me to understand. Obama is a highly educated, successful and passionate human being. Minimizing his accomplishments by hating him sheerly on his race is ignorance of the first degree.

This effigy is an isolated situation. The philosophy that “race is determinative of a person’s character” is the problem. I suspect the person or persons that chose to lynch this Obama-imitation are indicative of a wider class of people who are simply uncomfortable voting for, or supporting, someone different than themselves.

Incidents on our campus over the last year should make it clear that UK needs to foster diversity and understanding amongst its students. I believe UK President Lee Todd took the right approach in his letter to students, and in disavowing any support, implied or express, for this terrible form of expression. I congratulate him for providing effective leadership on this issue.

Todd’s insistence that our university rise above such hatred is admirable. However, I call upon more concrete action from the UK administration to educate its students about diversity, to minimize such attitudes underlying the event that took place. What happened is regrettable, but the real problem is that so many people, both students at our university, and members of the population of our state at large, simply look at blacks as inferior, and any black aspiring to political office as uppity, or worthy of demonization.

If UK is serious about preventing the attitudes that cause such events, and in seriously fostering diversity on our campus, I will offer my own personal proposal. Mandate a class that focuses on racial diversity and education. Most people are simply ignorant of black culture. If students had to take this class, or even a once-a-month seminar for an hour credit, this would go a long way in providing people with more education, which tends to decrease ignorance.

To you, the reader, I encourage you to judge someone based on character, not skin color.

Tommy Juanso

second-year law student