Staring at the swastikas drawn on my campaign posters, my first reaction was sadness and regret.

 It was February 2007, and I was running for student body president at Carleton University. Another one of my posters had a Hitler moustache drawn on my face.

I had two options at the time. One, take the posters down and replace them without raising a ruckus. Two, lodge an official complaint with the chief electoral officer, go to the media and make it an issue. I chose the first option.

I decided from the outset that I did not want my religion to be an issue. I did not want my positive campaign for change in student leadership to be defined by anti-Semitism. It was a missed opportunity on my part to shed light on an emerging problem on campuses across Canada: a rise in anti-Semitism.

Anti-Jewish sentiment is rising on campuses, and it is being fuelled by the anti-Israel movement, which uses political free speech as a wall to hide behind and lob racist remarks into the public arena.

The question is, why are we taking it?

Most of my colleagues at Carleton either don’t think anti-Semitism is truly a problem or don’t see the point of raising it as an issue.

At one Shabbat dinner I attended with three members of the Jewish fraternity in Ottawa, I speculated about ideas for my next column. I suggested anti-Semitism on campus, and one friend immediately stated his opposition to the idea, before recalling his own brush with anti-Semitism in first year when someone drew a swastika on his dorm room door. The sudden flashback gave him pause.

The desire on the part of many Jewish students is to move on. Our society is for the most part accepted on campus, and quite simply, we are sick of playing the role of victim. Our community is so strong in so many ways, it almost feels like sour grapes to get up in arms over a piece of childish graffiti.

Meanwhile, on campuses today, it is a fear of racism against Islamic students that dominates campaigns to end hate.

But the truth is, the number of Muslim students is vastly greater than the Jewish population, and I have found anti-Muslim sentiment to be nearly non-existent on campus. In fact, Muslim students have their own prayer room at Carleton and have been allowed to use other spaces to pray and hold events. No such permanent space exists for Jewish students.

At Carleton, I constantly hear stories about how professors teaching Middle East history courses have started to make anti-Israel and anti-Semitic dialogue part of their lectures. I tell people who experience this to go to the university Senate, the top academic body at the school, and raise their concerns. But again for the most part I get shrugs, as if there is nothing we can do and this must be accepted as the norm. It’s suggested that these types of professors will simply always exist, and it isn’t worth our breath to protest because then all we will be seen as is a bunch of complainers. This is a dangerous view and must be disavowed by Jewish student leaders.

We are a small community on the campuses in Ottawa, and as a result some students, especially younger ones, are hesitant to speak up about their faith. After all, when you walk through the famous tunnel system linking all buildings at Carleton and see that it is the Jewish Students’ Association mural that is almost always vandalized, then what is one to think?

It’s time to make anti-Semitism an issue on campus by calling on student and university leaders to take notice. Ask them to speak out and crackdown on any racist incidents. No anti-Semitic act should go unchecked.

We cannot fall into the trap of condemning incidents when they happen and then forgetting them two days later.

One day I want to come back to Carleton and walk through the halls and see a Jewish Students’ Association mural untouched, a symbol that we are accepted on campus.

I don’t think that is asking too much.