One Friday afternoon, a friend of mine from Rutgers visited campus for a writing workshop. We walked together through an empty Hamilton Hall and found a classroom door left slightly ajar. He entered the room quietly and sat down in the back row. For a few minutes, he carefully looked around. He never said a word. I watched, puzzled. Eventually, he looked up and laughed. "What's wrong?" I asked. "Nothing," he mused, "just the desks." Were they too old, too wobbly, splintered, or rusted? "Nope," he whispered, "just clean." I struggled to comprehend. In these three long years, I had never given one thought to the desks. They were there, just as they had always been there. What's so special about them?

Generations of Columbians have used those desks. The students left them as they found them. Despite the decades of opportunity, all the pens, keys, and pocket knives in the world have done little to deface their surfaces. Look around. Normal wear and tear aside, the desks in your classroom, the furniture in your room, and the cubbies in Butler are all immaculate. We're spoiled, and we don't even know it. After years of Windex-covered and blast-proof hard plastics in a public high school, the change is profound but inconspicuous. For all our differences, political and otherwise, we all share the same mutual respect for the classroom. By no means did my friend go to a bad school, but try as he might, he just could not get his head around the desks.

Moments like these renew my respect for the University. It is all too easy to forget that our friends and peers, people we see everyday, are some of the smartest folks in the country. Their respect for the institution is admirable, and the desks attest to this refined, academic culture. Columbia, however, is not a perfect place. I think we all recognize that fact. As protesters still boast, the administration bolted a majority of those picturesque Hamilton desks to the floor after the '68 protest and occupation. What stands as a testament to our intellectualism also reveals a tradition of progressive radicalism.

In my time here, I have addressed what I and many others believe to be progressive bias and institutional deficiencies. Rather than offering solutions or even acknowledging the problem, administrators and peers casually write off our concerns, calling us troublemakers. These hypocritical voices, both administrative and student, remain suspiciously silent when others do the same. It pains me when folks I barely know charge me with "ruining the school's reputation," or worse, "hating Columbia." For all their intelligence, common sense is lacking in these accusations.

Students go on a hunger strike for an ethnic studies department that only a handful will ever utilize; the letters to the editor and op-ed pieces flood in. Campus interest groups groan for a more diverse faculty, and the administration "finds" $15 million for new hires. Students of color felt marginalized in 2004, and the new Office of Multicultural Affairs leaps to their rescue. Students condemn the administration for its expansion into blight-ridden Manhattanville, and they hold open protests on the University's steps. Where are the critical voices then? Nobody rushes to condemn these actions as detrimental to the University's image. Yet, when a University with thousands of undergraduates and a myriad of departments cannot name one conservative professor, we're told to hush. When students leave class feeling ostracized and unable to express their own beliefs for fear of the social and academic stigma, critics tell them to suck it up. Because it is a "political issue," never a cultural or philosophic one, they have no right to complain.

These intellectuals, many of whom consider themselves "apolitical," are committing an intolerance of the worst kind-blind intolerance.

They do not believe the marginalization of conservatism warrants discussion. The critic tells the campus activist that it is best if we say nothing at all, but let's qualify that. Of all the potentially marginalized campus populations, and amid all the University flaws, only the conservative position is excessive and unjustifiable. Only the conservative who is effective in articulating his message is a "threat." It's a fact, don't you know? It's as clear as the writing on the desks.