That question will be on the minds of many people after the spraying of graffiti on the walls of the Bermuda College's buildings at Stonington.

Everyone is entitled to their point of view and everyone is entitled to have their say. Generally people's views change with time and maturity and the responsibilities of life.

While some of the statements on the wall were deeply offensive, it seems clear that whoever placed them there felt deeply about them. Traditionally college years have been a time to experiment and to express strong views of all sorts.

Colleges and universities are devoted to learning and this includes the sharing and debating of many different points of view. That is what learning is all about. But the emphasis should be on dialogue in an academic atmosphere of tolerance and mutual respect.

It's one thing to have strongly held opinions and to let people know about them. It is quite another to splash opinions all over the walls of the Bermuda College, causing considerable damage to property the public pays for and forcing people to read them without any right of reply. Anonymously spraying opinions on halls of learning and disappearing into the night is not only vandalism, it's selfish.

Those responsible may not have been college students. Indeed, a single person may have done it. We do not know. What we do know is that there has to be a better way of being heard than this.

One of the good things about Bermuda is that its size makes it relatively easy for individuals to be heard. In larger countries small voices tend to get lost in the mass. In Bermuda individuals can be heard and are heard in all sorts of ways from public meetings, to radio talk shows, to Letters to the Editor.

The freedom of speech is very wide and what limits there are largely protect other individuals or are designed to protect public sensitivity where obscenities are concerned. Free expression is healthy for individuals and for the community. However free speech has to stop at crying "Fire'' in a crowded theatre. That, of course, applies to any other cry which endangers other individuals.

In practice, freedom of speech has widened in recent years far beyond what it once was, simply by common usage. Both public and private tolerance of strong opinion and of statements once thought to be obscene is much more common today.

However, it may be that social pressures and economic pressures in Bermuda are still such that a person would be leery about standing front and centre to express radical views. But the fact is that things are changing and that radical views are more and more expressed. The problem is that just as one can make oneself heard in a small place, so one becomes more accountable in a small place where people are widely known to one another.

But the fact is that there has got to be a better way than paint on college walls.