Walking home tonight, I noticed the torn remnants of Walid Shoebat event posters littering the sidewalks. I couldn’t help but think how rare a sight it was. In my years at Berkeley, never had I seen one particular poster incite such hatred toward itself that it was first stripped from lampposts and telephone poles, then ripped to shreds, then finally scattered over street corners.

Recalling an incident that happened as far back as yesterday, I note yet another form of questionable behavior—behavior I expect Chancellor Birgeneau would even admit is “in conflict with” the mission of our university.

Monday afternoon I was flyering under Sather Gate when a young man—probably a student—walked up to me and asked for a handful of flyers. He said he was going to pass them out to his frat, a Latino business fraternity, if I remember correctly. Hesitant to give out so many flyers to a single person, I decided I would rather err by trusting this man than by doubting him. I graciously handed him ten to fifteen flyers and thanked him for what seemed at the time to be a random act of kindness. Half a minute later I saw him throw the bundle of paper into a trash can.

As a UC student hoping to graduate soon and start a life of my own—come of age, so to speak, in the transition to real-life and adulthood—it sickens me to see such blatant prejudice, dishonesty, betrayal and poor judgment–on, of all places, the breezeway of Upper Sproul. Why this young man, my college peer, chose to lie to me, a person he didn’t know, much less cared to get to know or even have an honest conversation with, and then acted the way he did is really something I’d like to know the honest answer to.

In the planning stages of tomorrow’s event, I was made aware of only a handful of groups that take particular issue with these men—groups whose members at other campuses have in the past resorted to distasteful acts of protest and intolerance similar and in some cases far worse than the ones I’ve witnessed here. Imagine my surprise when I later saw the student I mentioned above standing at the Muslim Students Association table.

In the final hours before tomorrow’s event, I want to make clear my reasons for writing this. As a student and someone who will be part of the leadership in the world in the years to come, it is my responsibility to care about the morality, judgment, and character of the people I will spend my career working with, the culture I will raise my family in, the country and world I will leave behind. I take this responsibility seriously, and I expect everyone, especially my peers at Berkeley, to do the same.