Rishi Kundi’s column titled “‘U’ should lighten up about fraternity actions” (SN 4/18) shows a sad misunderstanding about what it is like to be gay and lesbian in America.

I am a gay professor. Gays and lesbians endure indignities ranging from written and verbal insults to assault and even murder. Discrimination in housing and employment is legal unless there are policies in place such as those we have at our university or in the city of East Lansing.

Matthew Shepard’s death was an extension of the assumption that it’s OK to taunt gay people and subject them to ridicule and embarrassment. Hate crimes begin with hate speech.

Rather than urging people on campus to just laugh at it and relax, Kundi should applaud those standing up for the rights of gays and lesbians who say, “We will not tolerate this kind of treatment of fellow members of our campus community.”

When anyone in our campus is ridiculed, it diminishes us all. If members of our campus community learned an important lesson from this incident, that’s good.

MSU has welcomed and supported me as an openly gay professor. Sadly, that is not true everywhere. Until it is, it is incumbent upon all of us to speak out against injustice in any form.

Brenda Wrigley
assistant advertising professor