Chapter 13: Sorry, you're going to hell.

the university of pennsylvania (penn) is known for its really beautiful campus. walking down locust walk as the flowers bloom and the cool winds gently sway the budding trees is one of the greatest things about going to this school. i can always tell when summer starts: people laughing and talking as they sit outside on college green with their lunches, professors making exceptions to rules to teach under the shade, and the crazy man thundering in the middle of the walk to all who will listen, all the while condemning all non-white non-catholics to the depths of hell. peaceful, no?

ask any penn student, and he/she will tell you of this man. as soon as the weather is just right, he comes in the morning, sets up his little placards, and gets to work denouncing everyone in sight. most people just keep walking right past, a look of outrage on their face when they hear what he says. but usually, that outrage quickly subsides once he is out of ear shot. a brave few will attempt to argue with this man, explaining how many of the greatest achievements of man were created out of diversity, but this tends to get pretty ugly. after all, the only way to deal with a man so in love with his own voice is to raise your voice a bit higher. and higher. and higher. until you and he are screaming.

despite how people react to him, and the reaction is always the same, he never fails to come out there and attempt his re-education of the masses. i'm sure that at some point, someone tried to remove him from the spot, but he changed his cries to, "the first amendment allows me to stand right here!" then the police men who glared at him slowly faded away, then the human activists, then the bums, then the people who were remotely interested, until all you have left is him.

the only thing that worries me about this entire situation are the people who walk by with indifference, shouting louder into their cell phones so their friend can hear about last night's drunken escapades. after all, "the other kind of evil we must fear most is the indifference of good men." i've come to find that once you start ignoring the little things, you move on to the medium ones, slowly working your way up to the biggest of them all. then it takes the death of 1.5 million children at the hands of the nazis to shock people into attention again.

i am comforted by those who stop and fight, who risk being late to chemistry again just to tell that man off. i am also comforted by the looks of outrage that i see on faces as they past by because at least realizing the wrong in something is just as important as fighting against it.