Classy: Columbia Douchebags Heckle Wheelchair-Bound Purple Heart Iraq War Vet

These Ivy League universities are all for gays in the military. Yet when it comes to welcoming ROTC on their campus, that's when "tolerance" goes out the window. This is a particularly ugly display at the same campus that welcomed Iranian psychopath Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with open arms a few years ago.

Columbia University students heckled a war hero during a town-hall meeting on whether ROTC should be allowed back on campus.

"Racist!" some students yelled at Anthony Maschek, a Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008. Others hissed and booed the veteran.

Maschek, 28, had bravely stepped up to the mike Tuesday at the meeting to issue an impassioned challenge to fellow students on their perceptions of the military.

"It doesn't matter how you feel about the war. It doesn't matter how you feel about fighting," said Maschek. "There are bad men out there plotting to kill you."

Unfortunately Maschek doesn't seem to understand these so-called students are on the side of the bad guys, not the U.S. military.

Several students laughed and jeered the Idaho native, a 10th Mountain Division infantryman who spent two years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington recovering from grievous wounds.

Maschek, who is studying economics, miraculously survived the insurgent attack in Kirkuk. In the hail of gunfire, he broke both legs and suffered wounds to his abdomen, arm and chest.

He enrolled last August at the Ivy League school, where an increasingly ugly battle is unfolding over the 42-year military ban there.

This is where we are now in America: People laugh and sneer at wounded veterans. Yet go and make fun of a liberal and it's basically a hate crime.

José Robledo, 30, a Columbia student who commutes to Fordham University for ROTC coursework, said he found the treatment of Maschek abhorrent.

"The anti-ROTC side has been disrespectful and loud. They hiss and they jeer," he said. "It's been to the detriment of the argument."

Gee, ya think?

One would hope that some day the Forces of Tolerance actually become, you know, tolerant of others. I think that ship has sailed, however. There's just no reaching such sick, hate-filled, bigoted minds.

So much for the new age of civility. That only applies to one side of the political spectrum, apparently.

A Columbia dean apparently is in favor of allowing ROTC back, but according to this report that represents bias or something. Bias, of course, being speech you don't agree with.

Several students from Lucha, a Latino activist group, and Students for Justice in Palestine said that having the dean of the college open the event with a pro-ROTC speech inserted a bias into the debate.

“There is something wrong when the person with authority, the dean of Columbia College, the person who represents this institution, and spoke as the voice of the institution, begins a supposedly open debate with a biased narrative,” Aarti Sethi, GSAS ’15, said.

Yet it's all to clear who the bigots are.

Nico Barragan, CC ’13 and an ROTC air force cadet, said that it’s members of the military who are made to feel uncomfortable on campus.

“I try to avoid walking around campus in my uniform. I get dirty looks and people in class tell me I’m signing up to kill children to pay my tuition bills,” Barragan, who is also the secretary of Columbia Queer Alliance, said.

Learned Foote, CC ’11 and Columbia College Student Council president, said many of the people who speak publicly about ROTC have radical opinions.

“I do wonder what the median Columbia student thinks about this,” he said.

Barragan said he believes most Columbia students support ROTC but remain silent.

“The anti-military are always gonna be the radicals. They’re going to be the loudest but they’re not the majority,” he said.