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One way to explore the scope and limits of the Brandeis policy (is it too broad, is it too narrow?) is to think up a number of hypothetical situations and/or examples of conduct which might be sanctionable under the provision. So, for instance, which of the following are examples of discriminatory verbal harassment according to Paragraph 6.4?

• A student excludes someone from a study group because that person is of a different race, ethnic origin, gender, and/or sexual orientation than the students in the group. She says "You people are inferior and should not even be at Brandeis."

• After a dormitory argument in which a black student claims that Ludwig van Beethoven was mulatto and other students object to placing such stress on racial origins, two white students deface a picture of the composer into a blackface caricature and post it on the wall opposite the entrance to the black student's dorm room so that it can be clearly seen by anyone leaving the room.

• A male student makes the remark in an advanced math class that "Women just aren't as good in this field as men," creating a hostile learning environment for his female classmates.

• A student in a class on the Holocaust says: "All Krauts are stupid." Another in an American Studies class on the Vietnam War describes the North Vietnamese as "Gooks." There are no students of German origin in the Holocaust class or Vietnamese in the American Studies class.

• A student in a Sociology class says that as far as he is concerned "Homosexuality is unnatural and anyone who is "into it" ought to grow up and get over it." A gay student in the class considers the remark demeaning and finds that this student's opinion about homosexuality makes it difficult, if not impossible, for him to come to class, let alone participate in class discussions.

• A Brandeis student with neo-Nazi sympathies hangs a brightly colored, historically accurate Nazi banner embroidered with a swastika from his window.

• A Brandeis student with neo-Nazi sympathies waves a brightly colored, historically accurate Nazi banner embroidered with a swastika in the face of a particular student on campus, a student whose parents the Nazi sympathizer knows both lost a close relative at Buchenwald. This happens only once.

• A Brandeis student with neo-Nazi sympathies takes out and waves a brightly colored, historically accurate Nazi banner embroidered with a swastika during a public forum on the Holocaust at which many members of the Brandeis community are present.

• A Brandeis student with neo-Nazi sympathies waves a brightly colored, historically accurate Nazi banner embroidered with a swastika in the face of a particular student on campus, a student whose parents the Nazi sympathizer knows lost relatives at Buchenwald. The student repeatedly confronts this student in a variety of settings, waving the banner in his face, in Sherman at lunch-time, in the Boulevard at tea-time, outside the student's dorm, even in the library.

• A Brandeis student with neo-Nazi sympathies takes out and waves a brightly colored, historically accurate Nazi banner embroidered with a swastika during an invited talk he is delivering at a public forum on the Holocaust at which many members of the Brandeis community are present.

• A Brandeis student defaces a picture of Martin Luther King on Martin Luther King Day in front of Goldfarb Library and then sets it on fire.

• A Brandeis student heckles the main speaker during a public forum to which all members of the Brandeis community have been invited. The student yells out "You stupid bastard" and "Your mother must have met your father in a pig-sty." What difference does it make if the speaker is white, female, black, Jewish, American Indian, Chinese, gay, or a Veteran of World War II?

• A student walks across campus wearing a jacket with the words "I HATE ALL [fill in the blank]" stiched on the back. Each week a new epithet is stiched in the blank space; among these are "WOPS," "KIKES," "SPICKS," "PANSIES," "POLACKS," "HONKIES," "FRUITS," and "SLANT-EYES."

• A Brandeis student tells jokes at lunch using these same epithets.

• A Brandeis student organization sponsors a comedian who makes ethnic slurs and derogatory comments against Hispanics and gays.

• A Brandeis student displays a confederate flag on the door of his room in his residence hall.

• A black student is confronted and racially insulted by two white students in the cafeteria.

• Derogatory comments demeaning of the race of a student are printed up and slipped into a book that the student is reading in the library.

• The same derogatory comments are printed in Justice.

• A student comments about the physical appearance of another student during a class discussion and in a way that is intended to be demeaning of that student's ethnic background.

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