Last fall, Jose M. Padilla '97 found a swastika drawn on his door. Last month, Steven J. Mitby '99 received an anonymous note signed with a swastika.

Padilla and Mitby are conservative students. Both of them found the letters after they--or groups to which they belong--expressed conservative views.

Padilla, a member of Peninsula magazine, found the swastika on his door after the magazine's controversial "Know Your Enemy" issue came out in September.

Since the issue came out, Padilla says students have called him a fool, idiot, bigot, fascist and Nazi.

The letter Mitby received called him a "jackbooted Nazi thug" after he challenged an Undergraduate Council resolution against "transgender" discrimination on Feb. 23.

These hate acts--and other incidents--have led some conservatives to feel unwelcome on campus. Even worse, some conservative students say, the letters attempt to violate their freedom of speech.

"You're embarrassed to say that you're Republican because you get bad reactions and weird looks. I've been called sellout and worse and some people stop talking to you," Padilla says.

Padilla says he has gotten this reaction less as his classmates have gotten to know him better. "But there is still no effort to make conservatism seem like a normal thing," he says.

Mitby says the anonymous threat ("If you think you've heard nasty things over e-mail, you ain't seen nothing yet," it read) has made him hesitant to speak his mind.

"I'm concerned by the level of disrespect shown for dissenting opinions and particularly offensive is the use of the word 'Nazi,'" he says.

Peninsula editor Bradley L. Whitman '98 agrees. "It does seem that there is a double standard where it's okay to try and suppress the opinions of conservatives and infringe on their rights of free speech," he says. "Calling us Nazis or fascists allows them to simply lump our views into a category where we can't be taken seriously."

Two weeks ago, Peninsula comp posters with the slogan "Faith, family and freedom" were parodied with posters equating the group with "racism, fear and bigotry."

Whitman says conservatives face intolerance because they are a minority on campus.

"The power resides in the majority and the majority is liberal," he says.

Because conservatism is unpopular on campus, students let conservative-bashing slide, says one council member who asked to remain anonymous.

"I think if you ask everyone on campus, they would say that Steve [Mitby] didn't deserve the hate letter. But privately, many people probably thought it wasn't thoroughly unjustified," the council member says. "Many U.C. members condemned the incident [against Mitby] but it just didn't sit right with them to say what happened to Steven was categorically wrong. A conservative opinion is going to be typecast as intolerant whereas a liberal opinion is going to be seen as being tolerant."