Today’s editorial does not carry a complicated message. It’s not a brain-teaser or an intellectual trailblazer. In fact, it’s a pretty simple and direct path that’s been well marked.

To the individual who thought it was cute or brave or original to deface the Black History Month poster on campus at Slippery Rock University, we have this to say:

Knock it off.

You’re not being cute, brave, funny or original.

You might be more alone than you ever realized. The Butler Eagle stands firmly alongside university President William Behre in condemning the “hateful and race-baiting rhetoric” you scrawled anonymously on the poster. Many others in the community — leaders in business, religion, education, medicine, the arts, science and law, among others — have grown weary of generations of spiritual sniper shots by shadowy figures like you.

President Behre accurately and justifiably suggested: “It’s impossible to understand what is in the heart of someone [like you] who spews such distasteful epitaphs.”

Additionally, you have no idea how many of us in the community share President Behre’s anger and his sense of sorrow and anguish that your actions have caused to the community as a whole, especially to our African-American students, faculty and staff who were targeted by your cowardly act.

The most difficult fact for us to accept is that you — a part of this community — are carrying this poisonous way of thinking around with you, among us, like a biohazard threatening to infect others with your hatred and penchant for violence.

“Your behavior has no place at Slippery Rock University,” Behre wrote in his letter to students, faculty and staff. “Your behavior was an act of cowardice and ignorance that will not be tolerated.”

The bigger question might be this: can you separate yourself from this behavior and leave it behind — repent of it, as the Christian evangelists would say? If not, then you will politely be asked to leave along with your abhorrent behavior.

The rest of us need to stop playing around with vital issues in a culture that packs us ever-tighter together, both physically and figuratively, thanks to social media.

The university is urging all of its students to attend one or more Black History Month events. Behre suggests that the best way for students to support their classmates is to take the opportunity to genuinely try to understand perspectives or experiences different from their own.

“If we are going to really do something to address ignorance, we have to arm ourselves with the truth,” Behre wrote, adding that “sometimes that is difficult and uncomfortable.”

Behre wrote the college hopes to combat such hate with growth through an open meeting that will include university and student leaders having a conversation about making the university more welcoming and safer for all students. The gathering will be held at 8 p.m. Monday at Smith Student Center Theatre.

Finally, remember something that somebody’s wise mother once said, or might have said, about the mystery of race, individuality and the human experience: We’re like snowflakes: no two are identical, and yet ultimately all are formed in the likeness and image of God, by God’s own hand, made of the same dirt.