The reason I chose to attend Marquette had to do with the fact that it is a Catholic university with Catholic, Jesuit values and beliefs. Since I have arrived on campus my experience has often been eye-opening and I have had the opportunity to be exposed to events and speakers who both agree and disagree with my beliefs and ideas.

I like to think that those experiences have made me a better person but that even without them I never would have had as ignorant, sheltered or closeminded view as Douglas Zabrowski's March 8 Viewpoint.

First of all, the Gay/Straight Alliance is not an organization that flaunts homosexuality; it is one that is serving as an outlet for members of the gay and lesbian community to find support in a world that does not always make life easy for them.

Past and present members of the organization have worked tirelessly to spread a greater understanding of what it means to be homosexual, especially to people like Zabrowski who seem to believe they ought to be shunned members of society that we allow to exist only so long as it is in small groups that we do not actually acknowledge anyway.

Why should GSA not be allowed to exist in the same way that any other student organization does? I am not plugging the organization or even saying I support it. This is not about my personal views on homosexuality. I am simply saying that they deserve to be an equal part of the community.

Saying they can exist but only as a small, private group would suggest that the university is ashamed that they exist, as was pointed out by Jason Brent in another March 8 Viewpoint. As Catholics we are called to treat all people with "respect, compassion and sensitivity."

Zabrowski made several references to the fact that we are a Catholic university — yes we are and that does not stand in the way of the fact that a university, secular or not, has an obligation to provide their students with a wide range of opportunites to see, hear and even participate that may not always fall immediately in line with our Catholic values.

I believe it does not make us bad Catholics, instead, I believe it makes us better ones by being informed about and gaining understanding of other members of the university and world community. A common criticism of Catholic education is that it is typically one-sided. Members of other faith communities are commonly better informed about faith, whereas Catholics, for the most part, are often well versed in Catholicism, but that is where it ends.

I firmly believe that it is through challenging our faith and asking those tough quesitons about aspects of our faith that we take issue with or lack a strong understanding of ultimately leads us to strengthen our faith and understanding of it as we are able to find those answers.

Finally, as Catholics, we ought to be strong enough in our own convictions and openminded enough as people that we are able to accept others and their varied beliefs and opinions without feeling threatened by their message. It is through understanding one another that we are best able to relate to people.

If we only wish to understand and listen to those who think and believe the same things we do how are we ever to coexist in a world with such a wide varierty of people, values, beliefs and ideas?

As Catholics, we are not here to judge but to treat other people as we would like to be treated — it is not a difficult lesson, one many of us learned in kindergarten and ought to remind ourselves of each and every day — it would make our world a better place.

Jennifer Kolodziej is a junior journalism and political science major.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 12 2005.