Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don't criticize what you can't understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command, your old road is rapidly agin'. Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand, for the times they are a-changin'. -Bob Dylan

One of humanity’s most shameful attributes is our irrational fear of things that we don’t understand. Equally distressing is the fact that this fear breeds contempt, judgment and intolerance. This intolerance is especially unacceptable at a university, an institution where people seek to understand and appreciate the unknown.

Part of life is overcoming our instinctive reactions to things around us; only when we conquer our own irrational impulses are we prepared to deal with the world around us. An example of this is resisting our urge to answer violence with more violence. Deep down everyone knows this doesn’t work, but few and far between are the times when people are strong enough to let their violent tendencies go. Intolerance and fear are other childish comforts to which people all to often flee when confronted with the unknown.

Overcoming the urge to fear and hate is a scary thought in itself. Thinking about fear of the unknown reminds me of the saying that "to find new lands beyond the sea, you must lose sight of the shore behind you." Christopher Columbus comes to mind as someone who physically overcame fear of the unknown when he stumbled upon the New World. He failed miserably, however, to overcome his fear and misunderstanding of the Native Americans that he encountered here, precipitating a genocide of terrifying proportions.

It makes me sick and sad that the Mennonite community is often rife with intolerance of the misunderstood. Even worse is the fact that intolerant people with money dictate what everyone else does. In my high school (Eastern Mennonite High School) choir all the guys had to cut any long hair and remove any earrings. Apparently some rich donor was so threatened by these things that they would otherwise not support the choir. In the grand scheme of things, this is probably a trivial example, but decisions are also made in this community to please intolerant, fearful people on matters that are anything but trivial.

EMU, like any institution of higher learning, should be a place where people can embrace things that are misunderstood, even things that make us afraid. The current manner in which we cater to the intolerant whims of powerful people only ensures that this pattern will continue in the future.

Andrew Jenner goes to EMU. Contact him at jennera@emu.edu