Sabrina Noble columnist

This week, the sixth-annual Tunnel of Oppression ran "to challenge students to think about stereotypes, oppression and hatred." It featured such issues as racism, homophobia and classism.

Though the program stresses that society has a long way to go, its very existence demonstrates how far we've already come just in the last few decades.

However, while walking around campus, I can't help but wonder if we truly have an "Eye of Diversity," or if we are so caught up in the majority that we've become blind and even hostile toward the minority - this time, not toward demographic minorities, but toward minority opinion. Over this past semester, I've heard students cry out against critical commentary of ethnic groups, speakers against homosexuality on campus, religious bands playing on the Mall and humor based on stereotypes.

While many of us certainly find protests against these issues valid - and it's a right to protest just about anything - they also denote an alarming trend: Political correctness beginning to suppress the same freedom of speech to which it owes its existence. Apparently, ideas running counter to the majority aren't welcome on this campus.

James Fenimore Cooper said: "It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny."

Though Cooper wrote in a much different time, we would be wise to heed his words. As society becomes - at least compared to the past - increasingly liberal, it must expect and even embrace dissent. Today's accepted opinions - especially on the issues of non-religion, race and homosexuality - were once the dissenting opinions themselves.

In the end, democracy has absolutely nothing to do with political correctness. In fact it has everything to do with providing other view points with which to weigh and re-evaluate what we currently call 'correct.'

Is there such a thing as hate speech? Yes. Must it be allowed, regardless of who and how it offends? Yes.

But why? Because that's freedom of speech and all must be protected. Otherwise, we've embarked on the slippery slope of censorship. The idea of political correctness, if it had its way, would already be skiing along at full speed, bound for self-destruction. Luckily, we've got the First Amendment as a gatekeeper at the top, turning people away at the lifts.

Free speech isn't always pretty. My vision of an ideal afternoon isn't listening to a Mall preacher tell me I'm going to hell, reading letters arguing over the moral nature of homosexuality, or watching students cling to racism. But as a believer in free speech above the majority or minority, I cannot deny such speech its right to exist.

And if we do, we might as well throw up our hands and go home, because democracy has failed.

In the end, democracy has absolutely nothing to do with political correctness. In fact, it has everything to do with providing other viewpoints with which to weigh and re-evaluate what we currently call "correct." I think we can all agree that there's nothing politically incorrect about caring to check if we're right, and changing if we decide we're wrong. Really, we should be relieved that someone's checking these things, even when it's unpopular to do so.

We Americans - and anyone who has studied our history - should know by now that "majority" is not synonymous with "right;" the majority always has something to learn from its unpopular contemporaries. The fall of slavery, women's rights and civil rights began in the mouths of a few who ventured to disagree with the general consensus. Fortunately for us, those unpopular opinions found a foothold among members of the majority who cared to listen to ideas they didn't support ... yet.

America (and the microcosm that is our campus) must always be a give-and-take society; that's the vital sign of health, growth and progress. As such, we must be tolerant of other views, acknowledging that, regardless of how strongly we may disagree with them - and even if we'll disagree to our very last breath - their presence is vital.

Sabrina Noble is an English and creative writing senior. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu