Juan Villa / The Collegian
David Brooks was leaving work. There was a concert. A couple walked by and the man looked at Brooks and called him a faggot.
“To see him say it with such vehement was shocking I was angry at first then I was sorry for the guy,â€Â Brooks said. “He felt like he had to belittle me to look good in front of his friends.â€Â
Brooks did not report it to authorities. He said he had no time to feel anything else but shock.
“It all happened so quickly,â€Â Brooks said. “The next thing I knew he was gone and I went back to finish what I was doing for work.â€Â
The incident did not happen on campus, but it does not mean similar occurrences don̢۪t.
“Not too long ago, we had a student come in telling us that someone had yelled racial slurs at him,â€Â Amy Armstrong, public relations officer for University Police, said. “He did not want to file charges but he wanted us to be aware in case something happened.â€Â
Armstrong said that up until 2007, University Police has no hate-crime reports.
However, Walter Mallsberry, a senior majoring in mathematics, said it is still an issue.
“It happens more and more every time,â€Â Mallsberry said. “A lot of it happens behind closed doors. They don’t want to talk about it, they think it’s normal.â€Â
Mallsberry was not only referring to hate crimes, but to violence as a whole.
“We need to take a stand against it,â€Â Mallsberry said.
Gandhi was a political and spiritual leader in India who believed in nonviolent methods to achieve his goals. Something that Sergeant Victor Tafoya, from the U.S Marines reserves feels torn about.
“You can’t fix violence with violence,â€Â Tafoya said. “Violence is when harm is done to another either physically or mentally. It is also a way to intimidate a nation, in this case terrorists, to get your way.â€Â
Tafoya has been overseas experiencing the Iraqi war first hand. Although he said that war is an act of violence, sometimes it is the only option to ensure everyone else̢۪s safety.
“Sometimes there is no common sense in both parties to avoid violence and you just have to do it,â€Â Tafoya said. “And there will always be innocent victims that pay for it.â€Â
Going overseas was not necessary for Tafoya to experience violence first hand; he saw it since he was a child at home.
“I lived it with my father, he would come home drunk and abuse my mother and me both physically and verbally,â€Â Tafoya said. “That until I stood up to him and told him it had to stop.â€Â
In 2007, there were 1,408,337 cases of violence reported in the U.S.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations Hate Crime Report, in 2007 there where also 7,720 cases of hate crimes in which 13 percent were considered aggravated assault, that̢۪s over 1,000 people physically hurt because someone did not like their race, gender, religion, color or sexual preference.
The report states that the vast majority of these, 30 percent were committed close to homes or residences. More than 12 percent, close to 1,000 incidents, happened near schools or universities.
“We can help fix the problem by exposing it first, make sure someone is putting it out there,â€Â Tafoya said. “However, we should fix it at home first before we go overseas.â€Â