We live in a society that praises itself on inclusion. We live in a world that supposedly says that diversity is okay. In this day and age, differences are supposed to be celebrated. After all, 2015 is the year that gay marriage became legal across all 50 states. And 2015 marks the 60^thanniversary of when Rosa Parks was arrested. So why, in 2015, are racial tension issues present at the University of Delaware?

Here is the story. On Tuesday evening, Sept. 22, three “noose-like” items were found outside of Mitchell Hall at University of Delaware, and students were alerted through the UD Alert system. Though the “nooses” were just remnants of paper lanterns that had been hung in the spot for a previous event, this incident happened just one day after Townhall’s news editor Katie Pavlich, known for criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement, came to give a speech about the Second Amendment on campus. The events seemed to be inherently entwined, and students and faculty reacted. Though the issue could have easily been laid to rest once it was considered a non-hate crime, Acting President, Nancy M. Targett, felt that it was a perfect excuse to have a dialogue on The Green on Wednesday afternoon.

“When I learned that this was not a hate crime, I can’t tell you how relieved I was,” Targett stated at the gathering on The Green on Wednesday afternoon, “but I was also deeply disturbed to see how this incident exposed feelings of fear and pain in our students.” Yes, UD, our acting president took initiative on what happened to be a non-issue because she was concerned about the initial reactions to it. Students spoke up about having been called the N-word on campus, and one student even said that she was followed back to her dorm in Dickinson by a white man who called her “so f**king black.” Let me recap that: a man actually had the audacity to follow this student back to her freshman dorm and harass her about the color of her skin.

Newsflash, UD is not exactly known as a diverse campus. According to College Board, African-Americans make up a mere five percent of the student population, while Caucasians represent 76 percent. These students walk around campus everyday feeling like a minority, and they saw a window of opportunity to speak up about how the University of Delaware has failed to achieve diversity. These students and faculty members are taking the hatred they feel from the student body and turning it into a reason to raise awareness, and they have good reason to do so: events involving racial tension are happening all around the country, and even though nothing major happened here, it very well could.

Earlier this year, a Duke University student hanged a noose made of rope from a tree near a student union. This happened just a month after a fraternity at the University of Oklahoma had its charter removed after a viral video showed its members using the N-word in a chant. In 2014, a noose was hung around the neck of a statue of James Meredith, a civil rights figure, at the University of Mississippi. Upon telling her about this week’s events, I asked my friend Olivia Nelson, a student at University of Pennsylvania, if she has ever felt unsafe on campus, and she proceeded to tell me that she has “never felt physically unsafe on campus, but definitely felt as though people of color are ostracized and unwanted at times.” These events have happened, are happening, and will happen again at college campuses if nobody does anything about it.

These students representing minorities worked just as hard as you did to get into college, are just as smart as you are, and will probably even be your bosses someday. Theyare the ones who took the initiative to become change agents based on a fluke of a scare. Even if no hate-crime truly happened at UD this week, which we should be thanking our lucky stars about, this is the perfect time to make sure that it never will. Diversity should be celebrated, not ostracized. UD, as well as every other college campus, is a place where everybody should feel equal and included.

If you would like to see footage from Wednesday’s discussion on The Green, 49 News made a video that you can watch here: